Running Scared (1986)

Starring: Gregory Hines, Billy Crystal, Jimmy Smits, Joe Pantoliano, Dan Hedaya, Steven Bauer, Jonathan Gries, and Darlanne Fluegel
Grade: A

To give you a good idea on how fun Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal are and how much they mess around as detectives in Running Scared, check out this scene. It’s a pretty good example of how entertaining this movie is.

It’s too bad we never got a sequel.

Summary

Working on the North Side of Chicago in the cold winter, detectives Ray Hughes (Hines) and Danny Costanzo (Crystal) waste some time playing basketball at the park. It doesn’t take long for Danny to get punched in the face. He lets it go however because across the street from the park, perpetual suspect Snake (Pantoliano) just pulled up in a Mercedes. He’s also with Julio Gonzalez (Smits), a guy they put away three years ago. Julio’s eyes meet theirs and he drives away, leaving Snake to fend for himself. With a briefcase in hand, Snake runs down the street, with Ray and Danny chasing after him. They chase him right to his apartment. Following a threat of gunfire from Ray, Snake lets them in without a fight. They have dealt with Snake before and assume he’s dealing again. They search his briefcase and find $50,000. They wonder what it’s for, but Snake refuses to say anything further. This prompts Danny to go to the balcony and announce to everyone playing basketball that Snake has $50,000 in his apartment and how easy it is to get it. At the same time, he acts as if it’s protecting Snake by saying they can be a part of a neighborhood watch program to protect him. Danny and Ray plan on leaving, saying they can’t arrest Snake because he’s clean, so they wish him the best of luck after Danny’s announcement. Snake begs them to arrest him but since they can’t take him in for nothing, he punches Ray after Danny ducks.

As they drive Snake away, the only information he gives up is that Julio doesn’t work for anyone and that his boss “fell on a knife four times”. They decide to drive over to Julio’s house. They get into the neighborhood but see a crime scene because some guy jumped off the roof and killed himself. They talk with one cop on the scene, and the guy tells them once Julio got out of Joliet Prison, he somehow came across a lot of money and moved downtown in hopes of creating a new image because he wants to be the new Al Capone. Danny cuts things short because he has to go to his Aunt Rose’s funeral. He goes with Ray but because of the timing of it all, they’re forced to take Snake with. After the three interact with Danny’s ex-wife Anna (Fluegel) and his Aunt Sophie (Etel Billig), they leave and immediately get held up in the alley by two hoodlums looking for cash. Ray and Danny aren’t phased whatsoever by their guns. They show them their badges and tell them they’re under arrest, so the guys run. Ray and Danny end up shooting down their car to where they surrender, and they haul Snake and the two back to the police department. Captain Logan (Hedaya) approaches them and immediately accuses them of questioning the guy who committed suicide earlier, but they deny it on account of Snake. Following this, a guy interrupts to subpoena Ray to tell him he’s being sued for abusing the legal rights of some guy named Hector Wallace.

That night at the bar, Ray and Danny try to court this woman named Maryann (Tracy Reed). Ray wins. The next morning, Danny shows up to Ray’s place with donuts and to mess with him since he knows Maryann is still there. Afterwards, they go to work and Anna is waiting for them. A lawyer is also there to talk with Danny so to buy him some time, Ray acts as if he’s Danny and goes to the bathroom, so the guy follows him. Anna tells Danny the devasting news that she’s getting married to a dentist. At the same time, the guy catches up to Ray in the women’s bathroom to tell him he’s from a law firm and Danny will receive an estimated $40,000 after taxes from the estate of Aunt Rose. This softens the blow for Danny once Ray relays the news. Following this, the two are told by Captain Logan that the official report of the suicide was that it was a cop from the South Side who drowned. Realizing the wild coincidence of this happening with Julio being recently out of jail, Ray and Danny go talk to Snake. They try to offer him a deal to help them bust Julio, but he knows they got nothing on him and refuses. They have no choice but to let him go. However, when he collects his items before he leaves, he finds there’s only $5,000 in his briefcase. Knowing Ray and Danny are behind this, Snake is forced to work with them and wears a wire. Ray tells Snake he can file charges with the department to get all of his money back, but it’ll take months, so he’s forced to go through with it because the two offer to give the money back immediately if he helps.

Snake is making a buy that night on the South Side. Ray and Danny go and listen from afar. They hear Julio arguing with Snake about getting arrested, but Snake tells him he got off and he was careful about getting tailed there. After hearing Snake being attacked, Ray and Danny investigate one of the cargo vans and see Uzi submachine guns everywhere. They then infiltrate the boat everyone is hiding in. After hearing Snake yell the safe word (“Snakebite!”), they jump out and point their guns at Snake and Julio, only to see Snake set them up.

All of Julio’s guys circle them with weapons. As Julio admits his plans of taking over Chicago with his business dealings, Snake pleads with him to be the one to kill Ray and Danny since he did the favor for him on the South Side cop. Julio however turns on him because of the fact he brought the cops there and has his guys shoot and kill Snake. This ignites a shootout because two of Julio’s guys (Gries and Bauer) are actually undercover cops who are forced to act to reveal themselves. Because of this, it saves the lives of Ray and Danny. A chase happens and everything goes haywire. Thankfully, Ray and Danny are still able to apprehend Juilo through it all and arrest him. The next day, Logan calls Ray and Danny into his office to tell them they busted Julio before the DEA could move in. Apparently, they were tracking his shipments from Colombia, but everything got fucked up because Ray and Danny got involved. Plus, because of how everything was handled, how they screwed up the undercover guys’ mission after six months of work and jeopardized their own lives when they’re supposed to be smart veterans of the force, Logan forces the both of them to go on a mandatory vacation.

After thinking aloud about their own mortality in a random bar, we realize they decided to vacation together in Key West, Florida. Following this initial conversation, they decide to let loose, and this vacation turns out to be exactly what they needed. However, they enjoy it so much, it becomes increasingly difficult to consider going back to work in Chicago.

My Thoughts:

Who would’ve thought Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal would make such a great buddy cop team? Not for a single second did I think, “These two don’t belong in an action comedy”. I know this being such an oddity is part of the selling point, but these two gelled together on a different level. They both exemplified the classic gimmick of veteran detective partners who break the rules on the regular to clean up the streets anyway they can.

I know what you’re thinking: How can Billy Crystal believably shoot down bad guys in Chicago? Believe me, he makes it work.

It actually had me wondering why Crystal didn’t pursue more roles like this instead of reverting to normal comedic films. Maybe he didn’t want to keep up the physique. This is another thing about Crystal in Running Scared. He was in unbelievable shape for this role! Gregory Hines was also great. He was smooth, funny, and played off Crystal so well, you would’ve thought these two have been friends for years. Seriously, the bond he shares with him will have you begging for a sequel, with the breezy dialogue between them making this entertaining by itself. It was so easygoing and fun that the movie still would’ve been worthwhile had the rest of the narrative not held up. Thankfully for us, the rest of it still did.

It’s got all the elements of your favorite buddy cop film. We got the banter and the chemistry, the playful tone, the action is great and not too over-the-top, a couple of memorable villains that don’t overshadow the stars (Jimmy Smits and Joe Pantoliano), and at least one of the characters has an ex-wife. The last part isn’t a requirement, but it just tends to happen this way. Adding to this is the fact that both Ray and Danny have ex-wives. Though Ray doesn’t let it bother him, Danny is still very much hung up on his ex-wife. Basically, Billy Crystal reacts exactly how you would expect from him in the role. He makes smart comments about the person she’s marrying, acts like it doesn’t bother him, and he’s very much bothered to his core because he still loves her. It’s painfully obvious. Anna is around him a lot and still cares for him, but she admits later that she didn’t like the reckless lifestyle Danny lives as a Chicago cop. This is why she looks at him different when he talks about his official retirement. It’s as if she sees he’s settled down, matured, and realized there’s more to life than the action of the streets.

By the way, the reckless lifestyle isn’t specifically a Chicago thing. Danny and Ray could play things safe. Unfortunately, their nature as cops is going about things in the most reckless way possible, with guns blazing in most situations and not following standard procedures in others. Of course, this is another typical buddy cop movie thing to do, so we get it. As a result, we are given lively entertainment for an action comedy movie, but it doesn’t bode well for personal relationships regarding the characters, making things more interesting than you would think. I’m not going to sit here and lie to you and say this is a revolutionary concept. We see this type of conflict a lot in cop films, but the reason I bring it up is that it’s still a major highlight of this movie due to how well things are handled by Crystal and Darlanne Fluegel. Fluegel’s role doesn’t have a lot of screentime compared to the male-centric cast, but her presence does feel important when she’s involved. She grounds Danny as a character and adds a lot of depth to his personality with every interaction they have together. Even with all the excellent rapport between our two stars being the attraction of the movie, one of the best scenes is with Danny and Anna in Danny’s apartment, with Danny admitting his jealousy of Anna remarrying. This results in her admitting she didn’t leave him because she stopped loving him, it was the aforementioned lifestyle he used to represent.

She fights off Danny’s flirting following this, but seeing the love still being there sets up the wonderful shootout in the State of Illinois Center that caps off the movie in an electric way. It’s a moment of real-life drama hidden in the action-packed, light-hearted movie, and it shines brightly in highlighting the major difference between Danny’s life and Ray’s life and how they differ as people, despite them being such likeminded individuals on the surface. They’re brutally honest with each other too, which only brings them closer. Even when getting the news of Anna’s remarrying, Danny tries to get Ray to tell him encouraging words by saying he’s better off without her, but Ray straight-up tells him he’s not. As funny as it was, this is a true friendship, and we love watching it unfold.

In addition, we see how real their friendship is when Danny interrupts Ray in the middle of sex just because Anna is legitimately in trouble. Ray doesn’t even argue. He gets up to help him without question. Once again, these guys are true best friends, and this onscreen friendship at the heart of the film carries the story in what could’ve been an average movie.

A turning point of Running Scared is Ray and Danny being forced on vacation by Captain Logan. Of course, this happens due to them screwing up the DEA’s bust of Juilo Gonzalez by arresting him before they figured out where his shipments were going (which I would argue was a major overreaction from Logan since they should’ve had enough to put him away for good, but movie circumstances let a lawyer somehow get Julio out of it). In this relatively small montage of their vacation in Key West, you can see why Danny is convinced he should retire here, with Ray eventually agreeing with him as well. The weather is perfect, the women are beautiful, and it feels like they never have to worry about anything again. It’s a culture shock but in a good way. You can see how wired these two are when initially experiencing the laid-back atmosphere of this Florida city. When they see a bunch of strangers stand out by a pier, the two trained detectives immediately assume someone drowned or a ship sank. However, they are told everyone’s there to watch the sunset, and they react in disbelief. This is the first step into realizing how deep they are into their jobs. Maybe Logan is right. They do need a vacation. Finally, our two protagonists let loose, and this sequence where we see them enjoying themselves is so relaxing. Is it the separation from icy cold Chicago that induces the happiness, or is the fact that the fun-loving characters don’t have to worry about drug dealers and criminal kingpins at every corner? It’s probably a combination of both.

Regardless, when seeing this potential lifestyle and Danny realizing he has no one to go back to since Anna is getting remarried, this is where it finally hits him. They should open a bar and do this forever. Hey, we get it. This is the life!

On a side note, I love Logan’s reaction to their decision, correctly guessing “What are you gonna do? Open a bar?”. I like how this is such a “cop” thing to do that Logan guesses this exactly to be their “life-changing” idea. It’s even better to watch them deny it and change the subject.

How many times have we thought about this exact thing when on vacation: “We should stay here!”. We totally understand it. However, when you consider how Danny and Ray have been Chicago cops for this long, admit they don’t get any credit for their work, and risk death every day, I really understand it. It doesn’t take much for Ray to be convinced either. When they get back and put in their 30-day notice, this is where the title comes into play. Now, all they have to do is stay alive for another thirty days, but since they have targets on their backs from Julio and they run into danger daily, their job becomes a lot harder. For the first time in a while, they finally have something to live for in retirement. However, when you try to play it safe, you over think things and second guess yourself, making stuff even more difficult. As a result, this last month hits pretty hard for Danny and Ray, especially because their roots as cops still gets them attached to the Julio case. It becomes personal for both them and Julio himself.

The film essentially argues that playing it safe and avoiding trouble doesn’t mesh well with being a cop. I didn’t necessarily agree with this notion at first, but let’s consider this for a second. Have you ever made a concerted effort to avoid something, but it happens anyway? However, you know that if you didn’t care, it probably wouldn’t have happened?

Now that Ray and Danny are being extra careful, the potential for danger increases exponentially. Danny’s gun accidentally goes off in the locker room, the two start wearing bullet proof vests, and Danny even gets hit by friendly fire by fucking Uncle Rico! They even second guess themselves on breaking into Julio’s apartment complex, with Danny calling for backup. One of the cops even note it’s the “first time” he did that, so they thought it was serious. Everything has changed in the mindset of our protagonists, more so in Danny. When Danny talked earlier in the movie about potentially being killed in the line of duty, Ray counters by saying it won’t happen because they’re “too smart”. However, being smart has nothing to do with it. Anything can happen when you’re in law enforcement and when you go out looking for trouble like in the case of Julio, these two are that much closer to real danger. This is what makes this such an interesting conflict. Now that they only have a month left, they want Julio badly. They make it their goal to put Julio away as their last big arrest because of their own egos regarding the man, but they’re trying to do so by being more careful than they’ve ever been. It’s a cool premise in that regard because of how difficult they make it seem.

When combined with some awesome 80s-styled action (complete with great shootouts and a very notable chase sequence on the L tracks), so many memorable moments (having to give up their pants at gunpoint, messing around with the new trainees they fucked over previously, the nun and the priest in the backseat of the bulletproof taxi, etc.), the aforementioned fun chemistry between Crystal and Hines, and light-hearted humor throughout, Running Scared is one of those movies that’ll put you in a good mood once it’s over.

In the vein of Ray and Danny, you may even want to light up a cigar with them in celebration.