User reviews

This was an amazon prime find , it's nothing special but kept my attention. McCarthy does a decent job but the plot is a little dull at times . Worth a watch if you like a cat and mouse thriller . Sex and violence are pretty good too in the film. Scott Glenn is enjoyable as the hitman.

Fading brat-packer Andrew McCarthy is a Vegas cab driver who finds himself subjected to that hoary old plot device of finding a briefcase stuffed with money in the back of his cab. The problem is its stolen from the mob, who engage ruthless hitman Scott Glen to recover it. A laid-back performance from Glenn is the main reason to watch this generic thriller, which goes in some unexpected directions - thanks mostly to stupid decisions made by both McCarthy and Glenn.

This is an interesting non pretentious 90's thriller. I really enjoyed even it's somewhat predictable but entertaining. Acting is great, amazing the bad guy and If you love B-Action thrillers from the 90's you'll love this one.

I could not prevent myself to think about Michael Mann's feature whilst watching this one, because of a bearly, close topic, though directing is poor and acting too, except Scott Glenn's awesome performance as the clod blooded killer, a kind of Terminator. Good straight to DVD stuff, with no length at all.

This is one of those movies where the star is the good guy even though he leaves the scene of a deadly accident, steals a million dollars, is too stupid to effect a proper get away, kills a person and ends up torching his own car with two dead bodies in it and no one behind the steering wheel. The best parts were those of the killer and his friend (also a killer). I wonder about a woman who gets slugged full force directly in the face by one of these killers and doesn't get so much as a bruise. Well, she ends up running off with the star so I guess the slug job wasn't totally ineffective. I don't think there was one piece of this film that wasn't gratuitous to some extent, gratuitous inhumanity, gratuitous violence, gratuitous stupidity, gratuitous torture so I gave it a gratuitous four.

Scott Glenn as a psycho killer is the best thing about this movie. The musical score, on the other hand, is terrible. The music is extraordinarily generic and wrong for pretty much every scene.

The director, Mark Lester, made some pretty good B movies, with Commando being one of the most famous. Night of the Running Man is one of his better films apart from Commando, his magnum opus in many ways.

Both Glenn's and McCarthy's (also McCarthy was not in Breakfast Club, despite the claims of another reviewer) characters make foolish decisions constantly throughout the film. The stupidity doesn't make any sense when one considers the film's internal logic, such as it is. For example, McCarthy knows he is being chased at one point but still gives his real name to everyone he meets even though this was back (pre 9/11 and Patriot Act) when one could easily use a pseudonym to travel.

Glenn does an excellent job with the awful script, and John Glover also has a minor role as an unusually solicitous hitman. In my opinion, Glenn's performance pushes the film from a 5 (average) to a 6 (slightly above average).

At one point a friend said to me that Andrew McCarthy is one of the kings of Bad movies. Ok, ok, "Weekend at Bernies" or some of the others may be ok, but they are not very memorable and would be on few top 100 or 1000 lists.

Anyway, Night of the Running Man, brings this idea of McCarthyism into the 90's (1994), and once again it rings true.

The concept of the movie is ok: $1 mil in the taxi, a killer is after you, and you run. But, alas it is really simplified. Scott Glen, plays the killer without morals, so much so, that we know something is up come ending time.

There are also little type goofs, like McCarthy's feet are burned so badly that he is supposed to be bedridden for 2 or so weeks, yet in 2 days, he is walking without any limps.

Also, "night " is a bit of a mis-nomer as the movie takes place over days.

Oh well, what else do you expect?

Other thrillers are better, but you may like this.

Viewed on tape, Rating = 4

I saw this movie probably 2 or 3 years ago on cable and have to say that I enjoyed it. The movie begins with a Las Vegas cab driver finding a briefcase stuffed full of money. He thinks he's got it good until he realizes that a relentless hitman is after him and will stop at nothing to recover the money and dispose of McCarthy. Good action scenes and scenery.

There's so many defects and so many qualities about "Night of the Running Man" that in the end all we get is a bad film that is quite good and a good film that is ridiculously bad. The idea is almost an encounter between "Collateral" and "No Country for Old Men" but without the same dynamism and quality of both films. Dialogs are poorly written and very very simplistic to the point of annoyance, and the situations are predictable, implausible and incredibly unrealistic. It's a very silly movie!

Poor Andrew McCarthy suffers hell after finding a suitcase full of money in his cab, left by one of his unusual passengers. It looks like the mob is trying to get back the money and they hired a dangerous hit-man (Scott Glenn) to find it. On one side there's Andrew running away from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City and then Los Angeles, and on the other side, Glenn's tactics to find this dumb guy, who seems to be getting really smart after this sudden lucky strike. The most obvious clichés of the world are used here again and again.

However, the great surprise of this movie are the villains and their methods of doing their job. Glenn is very effective as the scary guy who kills everybody on his way, the kind of guy who doesn't trust anybody. He's very terrifying. And there's another villain, played by John Glover, who is very scary and because of his torture methods that the film gets interesting (when he puts McCarthy's feet on boiling water to prevent him from running away). That scene alone worths the whole film.

But this movie cannot escape of its negative aspects. Fight scenes are badly executed; lots of laughable parts; the amazing fact of a guy who had his feet burned walking on crutches one day later after the incident (at least put him on a wheelchair when walking out of the hospital, then I would believe just a little); the presentation of both major characters are terrible, you don't even have time to relate or care for the hero, he's simply thrown on the screen and we "have" to like him.

Uninteresting as an action film or as a thriller, and a little bit funny as a drama, "Night of the Running Man" is good in making us wondering why good actors allow themselves to waste their talents in such a simplistic and dull project where their skills aren't well used. It's not a complete waste of time but when you think of the possibilities of doing better things on a boring day, you won't even feel guilty of missing this, even if you admire the people involved in this. 5/10

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 and The Outfit from the 70s. Cohen & Tate and The Hit from the 1980s. And this one from the mid-90s.

It has a plot line that I find hard to resist: "Regular guy finds a pile of money and Complications ensue."

The Night of The Running Man is a lot of fun. 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 that rival the infamous tooth-drilling scene in Marathon Man, scenes where characters have their feet submerged in boiling water,have their necks broken,foreheads smacked with boards thru which nails are protruding, etc etc. All of the scenes with Scott Glenn have a nasty energy. He is an iconic looking,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. He comes across as very believably scary.

The film was directed by Mark Lester and he keeps things moving nicely.

This one is worth checking out.

It's another one of those movies where an innocent bystander ends up with the bad guy's money and tries to get away with it. This one ain't that bad though, has its ups and downs but is well put together. A good solid 90's action thriller that has been lost in the crowd and long forgotten, but it's worthy of your time.

Some movies are bad, but they know they're bad. That pretty much sums up Night of the Running Man. There is no pretense of being anything more than B movie schlock. The plot is ridiculously simplistic, the characters are cartoonish, and the sex and violence fulfill the sleaze quotient. The dialogue and acting are mediocre, although Scott Glenn fares decently well as the villainous hit man. Sometimes you want to put your brain in neutral and just passively watch some schlock, but the schlock has to at least be entertaining. This one should do the trick.

Enjoyable and exhilarating, if somewhat predictable and dumb crime/action/chase flick starring a tentatively low-key Andrew McCarthy and an antagonist so mean that even Scott Glenn seems to flinch. The film is wonderfully 1990s, in everything from the wide suits to the fiery red blood, and the somewhat shoddy production values blend in well with the film's ephemeral quality: You're watching a piece of film history filled with carefree violence made by filmmakers who think they're influenced by Quentin Tarantino, but whose lack of finesse makes the end product grimmer, and not at all as multi-layered. But it's still fun, because it's tight and full of adrenaline.

I do not know much about Director Mark Lester (in fact, I know so little that I actually confused him with the child actor who played Oliver Twist in Carol Reed's OLIVER! , a British 1968 film).

There is not very much to recommend Lester's direction, and I had already had a warning some 40 years ago when I had the misfortune to watch COMMANDO, featuring a thoroughly concrete Arnie Schwarzenegger.

At least Scott Glenn keeps you interested in this movie with more holes in the logic of its script than the proverbial Swiss cheese. He does it with his killer's good looks and his killer's professionalism. What is more, he has the competent assistance of sidekick John Glover, whereas Andrew McCarthy (never understood how he became an actor at all, let alone one with a few leads) simply does not look the part - even of a cab driver, let alone a fella with the wiles to elude Glenn and score beautiful Janet Gunn to boot.

In spite of those setbacks, the film has its moments, and I persisted to the thoroughly happy but unbelievable ending. A very generous 6/10 because Kathrin Middleton, who gets a neck twist courtesy of Glenn, is a beauty to remember and serves up the steamiest scene.

If it wasn't for my intense love for the era this movie was made in, I'd remove one star from my rating. This is not a good movie by any means, but it is more than enjoyable to watch. In fact, you almost don't want this crazy ride to end. If you're a fan of Scott Glenn, you should watch this. If you love the era and miss those action B-movies that made little to no sense, but satisfied your need for mindless fun and excitement, then you should DEFINITELY watch this.

Don't waste your time with this dog. This was an awful movie. Stilted direction, formulaic plot, cliché-ridden characters, wooden acting, badly shot (looked like an old Barbaby Jones episode, but not that good), dreadful script. And that was the good stuff. The 'car chase' in the beginning? Did anyone notice that they were going about 5 mph? I could go on and on, but, I've already wasted too much time on this piece of garbage. Oh, yeah, and how about how this movie treats women? Sexy and stupid and then.....dead.

I can't imagine why Scott Glenn or Andrew McCarthy would work on a movie this terrible.

Ah, another somewhat bizarre crime film that few people have heard about and, as of March in 2006, still is not available on DVD. It is one of the fastest-moving films I've seen.

Usually, I like to see at least one good person in the film but this is an exception but this is a notch above the average low-life 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: a woman dangled from the top of Hoover Dam and McCarthy being tortured with his feet scalded. 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 like to see it out on DVD before too long.

Pay TV movie channels seem to be on a recession with the rest of the world and the schedules have lately been filled with rather unknown movies with somewhat known actors, this movie being a prime example. I don't actually mind and I try to catch as many of them as new movies aren't often any better.

Every geek who grew up in the 80's knows Andrew McCarthy (who was not in The Breakfast Club btw, as another reviewer said), Scott Glenn is even today in every other movie and the director had a couple of hits in the 80's, so somewhat promising setup.

The plot itself is pretty good in all it's simplicity, you have a hit-man chasing a cab driver who took the opportunity to get rich with money which is not his. The chase is on and the scenery changes with a rather nice pace.

What doesn't really work, is the leading man McCarthy. I'd say he's just too weary and pathetic and you don't really get a hold of his character. The movie could've benefited from someone a bit more gutsy and charismatic as the lead. At times it feels as if McCarthy and Scott Glenn are in two separate movies, McCarthy in a low budget TV movie and Glenn doing a real movie.

As of writing this, I realised it's not even that old a movie. It kind of feels like a movie that was made in the 80's, but it's post-Pulp Fiction afterall. The movie probably just surfaced too late, it might've been more successful in the 80's when you didn't expect thrillers to be bigger than life with a lot of twists and turns. Night of the Running Man is very straightforward stuff.

'Night of the Running Man' is not much more than your average direct to video release. The production values are standard, the music or direction isn't anything special, the only thing that actually stands out is the performance by Scott Glenn (Silence of the Lambs). That and the torture scene.

The Breakfast Club's Andrew McCarthy plays a Las Vegas cabbie, who discovers a million dollars of cash stashed in her cab. It turns out to be stolen mob money, and he finds that a hired hit man (Glenn) is after the money- and him.

You could do a lot worse than to rent this, and a lot better, but considering the miniscule budget the producers had to work with, it is a pretty good actioner, even deserving of a limited theatrical run. Nothing special.

5.5/10

LOL... I would rather watch a chubby guy pick his nose at the bus stop for 2 hours!

Best part of the movies was when it was over!

I can't believe someone paid to have this movie made. Should just set their money on fire.

Only part worth watching is the cab chase at the beginning.... and yes I am being generous.