In The Age Of The Buddy Film-Not-Well, Maybe-Charles Grodin and Robert DeNiro’s “Midnight Run” (1988)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Bart Webber

Midnight Run, starring Charles Grodin, Robert DeNiro, 1988

Funny, lately I have been cutting down seriously on my film reviews working at the behest of site manager Greg Green on the fundamentals of an on-going series on the history of folk music, not the whole history I do not believe that I would live long enough to complete that vast task but the stuff from the 1960s folk minute that slammed through American youth nation and then disappeared almost without  a trace, music that I grew up with. I am deep in research and in doing interviews of whoever is still left standing from the diminishing number of active performers (a la endless tour Bob Dylan), to those who have hung up their cleats tot the coffeehouse owners and promoters who provided the initial infrastructure. That series is scheduled to start in the Summer of 2019.

Then along come the same site manager Greg who knows I am working my ass off to get the series off the ground (and knows as well from the less than perfect start of Laura Perkin’s Traipsing Through The Arts series how important a good start is) and asks me, pretty please, asks me to help him out with this 30^th anniversary tribute to the classic buddy film from an age that make an art out of such films Midnight Run. Greg told me he could not get anybody else to do the review the right way meaning having a feel for the buddy film genre having grown up in corner boy society in the Acre section of hometown North Adamsville where every trait exhibited in this film got a similar work-out.  And more importantly that I had had the role as Cash in the earlier buddy work Cash and Dale, not the film version but the off-Broadway production. (You will note, and Greg used it as a selling point, that this film’s 30^th anniversary was in 2018 and we are now in deep 2019 he is desperate.)  

The plotline to every buddy film, male or female, think Thelma and Louise is almost unimportant compared to the emerging merging and bonding of the targeted pair. Except that whatever exploits or travails the pair find themselves in should be long and varied enough for the audience to cheer the budding merger on. Midnight Run has that and more.  The plotline is simplicity itself, taking a page from other buddy films and having the pair run through every possible mode of transportation to get to their destination. Let’s cut to the chase.

Duke (Grodin’s role) was the max daddy accountant for Jimmy Swags, you remember that name if you are old enough, since after Bugsy Siegel fell down Jimmy Swags and his boys took over Vegas without a murmur. (Funny how these mobsters like to shorten their names to one syllable ever since Eddie Mars, Marston real name, started the trend in the 1920s when he ran all the rackets in LA after his previous boss, Pat Scanlon, fell down. Fell down according to rumor from a couple of well-placed slugs from the gun of one Eddie Mars). Except the Duke though he was working an up and up racket for real businessmen not as a launderer until he found out he was fronting for the mob. Reaction: take Jimmy Swags down for 15 million no small amount even back then, blow town and give most of the dough to charity. But as the mob’s money man the Feds were looking for this brother too and somehow he got himself in criminal trouble needing bail from his local friendly bail bondsman in beautiful LA. Then he skipped out and is nowhere to be found with only five days left before that crumb-bum bail bondman defaulted for something like half a million for his error in not knowing the Duke was hotter than a pistol. Ouch.

Not to worry though, at least for now since ex-cop crackerjack Jack Walsh (DeNiro’s role) is the max daddy bounty hunter who will make the situation right. With a little razzle-dazzle Walsh finds out that the Duke is hiding away with his wife in New York, finds him and through the first of many ruses clamps Duke and is ready to head west and the big pay-out. (That LA-NYC connection beautiful since three thousand miles will allow for many adventures and misadventures.) A few hour’s plane flight and done. Well of course not otherwise that would be a very short film. The “hook” is the Duke has a well-grounded fear of flying which gets them off that five-hour plane ride and down on the ground. A very much longer way to head west and fraught with more troubles than one could shake a stick at. Along the way they will use every form of private and public transportation except maybe covered wagon heading west. From trains to cars and trucks (borrowing that formula used in other such buddy travel-oriented films.) Naturally nothing will stop Jack from getting his man to LA and his dough to start a new life and in the end he does deliver his bounty to LA.

What counts though is the changing relationship between hyper working- class shoulder to the wheel Jack and droll and wise guy middle class Duke-they don’t like each other much. At the start. Can’t figure out what makes the other guy tick (especially when Duke offers Jack more dough that the bondsman to let him go-can’t figure Jack’s stay with the girl who brung you code). Through a million ups and downs being harassed by a second bounty-hunter courtesy of that bastard bondsman who deserves to get shafted, the Feds once they know Jack has Duke and Jimmy Swags who you know cannot let some holy goof underling get away with 15 mil they get to know each other. Jack in the end gets the Duke to LA mission accomplished but not to said bail bondsman. They part ways as minute friends. Classic.