Word: niro
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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MIDNIGHT RUN. A cross-country buddy movie may hold little promise, but Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin hold this one together...
...people who usually play this role -- Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Arnold Schwarzenegger -- seem to have been born to it, and often to very little else. What De Niro proves in Midnight Run is that it is a wonderfully actable part. What Willis proves in Die Hard is that it is not one you can ease through, especially if your preparation runs more to body building than to character building...
Would-be action stars need a sophisticated support system, and De Niro has lucked into a lulu. He plays Jack Walsh, an ex-Chicago cop who is now earning a perilous living in Los Angeles as a bounty hunter, returning bail jumpers to their bondsmen. It looks like an easy $100,000 when he is engaged to pick up Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin) in New York City and return him to Los Angeles before his bail must be forfeited. In comparison with Walsh's usual large, violent and well-armed prey, Mardukas is soft of bulk, mild of manner...
Like the other players, Grodin gives a nicely calibrated performance as the itch his captor cannot afford to scratch too vigorously. But it is De Niro's work that redeems an inherently improbable plot. He handles guns, quips and tight spots with the requisite elan. He brings something else to the part too: a deftly imagined sense of hard roads traveled before he hit this one, of a past lived, not just alluded to. When you root for him, you root for a man, not a killing machine...
Good, bad or indifferent, megabangs are beginning to cost megabucks. Reportedly, each of these films costs well over $30 million, with De Niro and Willis pulling in about $5 million a head. And in a season in which Schwarzenegger's Red Heat and Sylvester Stallone's pricey Rambo III are having trouble reaching profit, scholars of the bottom line are wondering if the action-adventure genre has a future. Possibly not, if people keep putting their money into more noise and bigger flames. But a performance like De Niro's, in a well-made entertainment like Midnight Run, is cheap...