Black Cat Run

Black Cat Run has a plot that could be written on a napkin, and drives down a well-traveled road, but generates more excitement than many "better written" movies. It's a chase film -- the hero tries to overtake and rescue his captured girlfriend before he himself is caught by pursuing policemen. But in it car stunts that we've seen many times before seem fresh and exciting, and the bad guys, who are almost as uniformly menacing as the monsters in a horror movie, are still authentically scary. The closest parallel is Spielberg's Duel, in which the characters are monotoned, the plot is straightforward and simple, but the thrills are real. In both cases, the director deserves the credit for knowing how to pace, time, frame, and present simple material in order to involve the audience emotionally.