What's cool about Midnight Run is it's one of the best buddy cop movies to not have one of the leads play an actual cop at the time. Robert De Niro is the ex-cop turned bounty hunter hired by Joey Pants to find mob accountant / bail jumper Charles Grodin. Not only is the mob chasing De Niro and Grodin, but the FBI is paying close attention too. Throw in another reckless renegade bounty hunter out to steal De Niro's bounty, and you know you're in for a wild ride. 

Midnight Run works because of the natural chemistry between De Niro and Grodin. De Niro is the Raging Bull, but Grodin steals the show. He's neurotic and quirky. Every word…

87/100

Arguably the most inspired comic pairing of all time, and Brest deserves enormous credit for insisting on Grodin even at the cost of scuttling his initial studio deal. (I might eventually devote a Scenic Routes column to the Duke's impersonation of Mosely at the bar, a scene in which every laugh is inspired solely by Grodin's delivery and timing—not a single line is even remotely funny on paper.) At the same time, though, the film works so well in large part because De Niro, still a decade or so away from the laziness that now mostly defines him, takes his role utterly seriously. One need only look at We're No Angels, made the following year, to see how broad…

“Fuck”

Such a simple word. Compact and direct. One of those rare words that guarantees a reaction when used in conversation. We say it in anger, lust, jest, and sometimes just because it feels good. We all drop a ''fuck'' from time to time. But just like anything else, there are amateurs and there are professionals. Robert Anthony De Niro Jr. is a fucking professional. If ''fucks'' were home runs he'd be a first ballot Hall of Famer and MIDNIGHT RUN would be his MVP season.

Despite giving off the appearance of run-of-the-mill 80’s yuk fest MIDNIGHT RUN is actually a masterpiece of wannabe tough guy vulgarity and macho posturing. But it’s also really fucking funny. A burned-out bounty hunter…

"I also suffer from acrophobia and claustrophobia."
"I'll tell you what: if you don't cooperate, you're gonna suffer from 'fistophobia'."

The first time I ever saw Midnight Run was via a BBC1 showing in the early nineties. They dubbed ALL the swearing. ALL OF IT. And yet, I still loved it. I don't know if it was because of a particularly fabulous effort on the part of the BBC dubbing department or if it was because the wonderful film underneath the censorship shone through anyway. But it's one of those things that you really had to be there to see because even having witnessed it myself, I simply cannot now, 20 years on, picture how they did it.

Taking the…

The one thing I have to say about Midnight Run, a movie which I found to be delightful, is that it is truly impressive that it could be such a romp and at the same time generate a number of genuinely moving moments.

There is an incalculable amount of violence and cursing in this movie, and Robert DeNiro gets to be really funny (at a point in his career where he had not done so quite as often as he would after doing Analyze This). It is probably because DeNiro is somehow very likable as Jack despite not exactly being this most lovable guy even before we learn that he had honorable reasons for leaving the police force that you…