Region:
Video: Enhanced Widescreen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
DVD Aspect Ratio: Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85:1)
Language: English, French
Subtitles: French
Weight factor: 1 item(s)

Plot Synopsis

Director Martin Brest, of Going in Style and Beverly Hills Cop fame, was in charge of Midnight Run. Robert De Niro stars as Jack Walsh, a hard-bitten bounty hunter offered $100,000 to bring in embezzler Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin). Handcuffed to the wimpy Mardukas, Walsh assumes that the extradition trip from New York to Los Angeles will be an uneventful one. But the prisoner hasn't told Walsh the whole story: the embezzler owes $15 million to a mobster (Dennis Farina), and he's been targeted for assassination. It's a toss-up as to what is the most entertaining aspect of Midnight Run: the slam-bang action and chase sequences or the verbal byplay between DeNiro and Grodin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Editorial Reviews:

A delightful fusion of a 1980s buddy picture and a wacky Odd Couple-style comedy, Midnight Run's mixture of action and comedy probably most resembles Arthur Hiller's 1979 road comedy The In-Laws. The success of both films depends on the interplay and chemistry between the two bickering leads, in this instance, Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin. Grodin had long been a comic actor of some acclaim (Heaven Can Wait), but this was De Niro's first mainstream comedy, and he acquitted himself admirably as the irascible bounty hunter sent to pick up Grodin's white-collar embezzler. Working from a clever script by George Gallo, director Martin Brest captures the precise levels of comedy and action that made his prior film, Beverly Hills Cop, such a hit. In Midnight Run, however, Brest allows complex characters to emerge from the set-up, and the film is all the better for the results. De Niro would continue to explore his comic side, to generally positive results, in films such as We're No Angels, Mad Dog and Glory, Wag the Dog, and Analyze This. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide