Customer Reviews

Night of the Running Man [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I saw this movie on the satellite and went and bought a copy. Good thing, because they have not bother issuing it on DVD.

Every character is well portrayed and the two villains (Scott Glenn and John Glover) are brilliant. The only villain character who can top Scott Glenn is Anthony Hopkins. Yes, Glenn is THAT good as a psychopathic killer.

The plot is clever and there are no idle moments during the lenght of this film. In fact, you wish it would last longer.

Movie companies are strange entities. Sometimes they can create real treasures such as this movie. Others come to mind, as an example: "Thursday" (get this: Unavailable except from private sellers; up to several hundred dollars [!] for a new copy); "Fargo," "Blood Simple," "Bound," "Montana," "Knockaround Guys," and "The Salton Sea," to mention just a few.

"Night of the Running Man" should be issued on DVD and I hope somebody up there in dreamland will read this comments and decide to do it.

This film is set in Las Vegas, a city dependent on tourism and gambling. With this foundation you can imagine the people it attracts. A man leaves a gambling casino with a small suitcase and hails a cab. Pursuers in another car chase this cab. After it crashes the man is struck by this car and killed. The pursuers do not retrieve the suitcase he carried! The cab driver leaves and takes the suitcase: it is filled with a million dollars in hundred-dollar bills. [That would weight about 32 lbs (14.5kg) and would not be as easily carried as shown in this film.]

The pursuers figure out the cabbie took the money. The casino manager hires a collector to get it back. This collector displays the identification of a Las Vegas police officer. He's not afraid of a mugger! The cabbie buys a train ticket but is easily tracked, even when he changes his destination to Los Angeles. Another collector picks him up in a taxicab, and takes him to a safe house. There is a scene of gratuitous torture. A miracle occurs, and Jimmy escapes. He winds up in a hospital for his wounds. Nobody looks inside the large bag he carried! [Believable?] A nurse tries to help him and gets entangled. [Believable?] There is a sideshow dealing with disloyal employees. The two collectors join forces. One is eliminated and Jimmy escapes to the cellar (no exit!). The fight results in an unexpected ending. Jimmy and the nurse discard the collectors [in a method that will attract a lot of attention!], and are last seen buying a ticket for Rio de Janeiro. While there is no extradition treaty, certain forces have the connections there to accomplish their revenge. Again, nobody looks inside the suitcase. [Believable?] The fact is that Customs searches both incoming and outgoing baggage. It is a crime to take out more than $10,000 without declaring it. All in all, it is an action movie that won't strain your brain.

This movie is great and I was very lucky to pick it up at the local video store for only a dollar. Good copy too.
Andrew McCarthy plays a cabdriver who picks up a passenger who has a million dollars in his suitcase. Pretty soon they are involved in a car chase and the passenger is dead. McCarthy takes the money, saying later that he didn't even want it (yeah right, who wouldn't want a million dollars?). He leaves town and has a hitman on his trail who wants to get the money back to his boss and ofcourse he is also hired to kill him, regardless of how many times he tells him he doesn't have to, I think he fully intends on killing him.
One bad mistake that McCarthy made which put Scott Glenn, the hitman onto him was telling this waitress at a diner where he was going so the hitman could force the truth out of her later on. McCarthy tells her he is going to Salt Lake City on the train. Now the killer knows where he is going. McCarthy should have lied and the hitman could have chosen any other station stops at random and possibly have picked the wrong one.
Later the hitman's affiliate kidnaps McCarthy and so he won't run off, he boils his feet in hot water, a scene that really stands out in this movie.Amazingly enough, the hitman's helper lets his guard down and falls asleep. When he wakes up he is hit on the head by a dumbbell from McCarthy and gets knocked unconscious. McCarthy goes to hospital and the hitman is always on his tail. Eventually a nurse and him leave the hospital, fall in love etc.
Later when Glenn catches up with them, he kills his helper, who once asked how did the hitman think it would go if they had a gunfight. Glenn answers very quickly.
It is a happy ending for McCarthy and his girlfriend although in real life I am not so sure it would work out this way. McCarthy gets lucky and nails the hitman in the head-literally.
This film has a lot of adventure and is a great film if you like films about hitmen chasing their victims.

If you're a movie nut like me you often comb the lower rungs of video stores looking for neglected gems from bygone eras: ROLLING THUNDER from the 70's. THE MEAN SEASON, THE HIT, COHEN & TATE from the 1980's. And THE NIGHT OF THE RUNNING MAN from the mid-90's.

It has a plot line that I am very enamored with: "regular guy finds a pile of money and complications ensue."

It has great performances from Scott Glenn and John Glover and also from Andrew McCarthy. There are some excruciatingly painful to watch moments in this film, scenes where characters have their feet submerged in boiling water,have their necks broken, etc etc; almost all of the scenes with Scott Glenn really have a nasty energy. He is an iconic-looking and leathery faced actor and I would love to see him get more flashy roles such as his part here as a vengeful and greedy hit man. he commands the screen whenever he appears and he isn't afraid to play a completely unlikable character in a very straightforward way. There are no cute actor tricks--playing to the gallery and softening the role.

Don't let the lame name of this movie fool you. If you like non-stop action, then this movie is for you. Scott Glenn plays a hitman, and I can't think of any other actor who played a bad guy who was this mean. This is a great movie that not many people know about. I only wish it was out on DVD.

What A Great Film!, especially if you're into films where you enjoy rooting for the "good guy/bad guy".

The question is, are you into films where you enjoy watching to see if your guy (the one that you've now staked all of your emotions in) can by the end of the film, outsmart the "very, very, very bad guy"?

If your answer is yes!, then this is most definitely your film.

In this film Scott Glenn plays one of the best villians that I've ever seen in any movie, period!

You will soon realize while watching the film that, you would never want him coming after you.

The story (in a nutshell) puts the before mentioned "good guy/bad guy" (Andrew McCarthy) in the position where he acquired some very hot mob money. It will soon be quite apparent to you that these are monetary funds that he should have thought twice about taking.

But the challenge now will be, will he (McCarthy) get to keep this mob money, also will he get to keep the well placed beautiful girl, and will he ultimately outsmart the relentless, brilliant, sadistic bad guy hired by the mob to get their money back (Glenn).

So fight fans, will you tune in to see if he will be captured, and to see if he will possibly die in a way that I can't go into here (being that Amazon is a family oriented website).

That's the simple story, but trust me it's told in a powerful (action packed) way that you (the viewers) will never forget.

This movie deserves a good look, and it's a great movie to see with a friend. Or hell, see it alone, just see it.

It rates every one of the 5 stars. Enjoy!

I precise you that this item IS on dvd but with french-dutch language only.
very hard-to-find , but I got it.

friendly yours from France.

Hard to review an item that was unplayable. Marketer should be clearer that foreign created software will not work on stateside machines

Great crime thriller with great performances and a fine pace. An entertaining film. [...]

Ah, here's another somewhat bizarre crime film that few people have heard about and, as of today (March, 2009), still is not available on DVD. It is one of the fastest-moving films I've seen.

This is a notch above the average low-life criminals affair because of the performances of Scott Glenn and John Glover. They play cold-blooded professional killers who act polite, have impressive vocabularies, dress with class, keep their cool, don't get loud and obnoxious....but are brutally sadistic. Both are also fascinating to watch with Glenn having the bigger role as the main hired killer and Glover as his friend in another city.

I might be overrating this a bit because the last 45 minutes is a stretch, a real stretch, beginning with the entrance of a beautiful nurse who unrealistically gets involved with Andrew McCarthy, a guy on the run from these killers. That just wouldn't happen, but it does keep the story going strong.

There are some memorable scenes in this movie and some of them not too pleasant, so be forewarned: it can be tough to watch. There are two gratuitous sex scenes in here, too.

At any rate, for a no-name movie, it was surprisingly entertaining and I'd love to see someone finally put this out on a Region 1 DVD. What are they waiting for?