Running Scared

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It's a pumped-up, intricate and fast-moving yarn that never flags and continues to play out in unexpected ways as it unravels.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Paul "Surfer Boy" Walker turns in a very credible action performance if you give him a Jersey accent, cover him in grime and beat the ever-loving tar out of him for two hours.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Running Scared is a vicious and brutal B-movie jacked up to hysterical, hallucinatory proportions -- a pulpy, violent action picture that torments the viewer as much as its characters, and I mean that as a compliment.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

If Running Scared had come out in 1994, before "Pulp Fiction," it - and Kramer - would be hailed as blazingly original. But questions of originality notwithstanding, there's plenty of blazing going on here.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

If you like kinetic movies about crime, criminals, and all sorts of bad behavior, Running Scared will catch and hold your attention.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Goes so far over the top, it circumnavigates the top and doubles back on itself; it's the Mobius Strip of over-the-topness. I am in awe. It throws in everything but the kitchen sink. Then it throws in the kitchen sink, too, and the combo washer-dryer in the laundry room, while the hero and his wife are having sex on top of it.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's way too violent and perversely excessive for many tastes, but there's more to its outrages than meets the eye, and that second look is well worth taking.

Film Threat Michael Ferraro

An overly ambitious guilty pleasure with enough action and violence to keep you interested, it just doesn’t have much else.

Premiere Jessica Letkemann

Ultimately, it is a serviceable, well-made thriller that earns its R rating.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

There also are hints of Doug Liman and Tony Scott to be found in this hopped-up, bullet-riddled crime thriller, but while certain sequences pack an admitted visceral kick, the prevailing effect is one of utter overkill.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Even a talented lead couldn't save Mr. Kramer from himself. As a writer, he may have fashioned a genre-busting screenplay, one that has its postmodern cake and eats it, too, but as a director he proves himself as blood simple, if generally less adept, as any Hollywood hire.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Not surprisingly, everything feels begged, borrowed and stolen from other better movies, from Quentin Tarantino's exclamation-point violence to the slo-mo bullet trajectory shots from "The Matrix."

Variety Justin Chang

There's no denying that viewers not prepared for the relentless stream of nasty personalities, profane invective and bone-crunching violence are in for a very long sit.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The ugliness on display in Running Scared has neither "Sin City's" context nor its wit, and it offers little more than stylish excess for its own sake, with no clear aspirations other than to twist people's arms until they yelp "Uncle."

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Running Scared's relationship to "The Cooler" is roughly that of industrial metal to a quaint torch song.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Running Scared is decently acted and divertingly brutal, but it's also a giant step backward for its maker.

Village Voice Luke Y. Thompson

Writer-director Wayne Kramer (The Cooler) is about as skilled at storytelling as Walker is at acting, which is to say not very.

USA Today Mike Clark

A potential howler done in by a tendency to wear too much body tissue on its sleeve.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The whole movie is some kind of joke, a sick one to be savored by a certain segment of the movie audience. You know who you are.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Running Scared has some camp value as the kind of midnight movie you can laugh at (not with), but it isn't so much imitation Tarantino as it is imitation imitation Tarantino.

Entertainment Weekly Scott Brown

Running is a fevered smashup, as if Hollywood dug up Sam Peckinpah's corpse and forced it to adapt "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" for the screen.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

A vicious, incoherent shoot-'em-up.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

Writer/director Wayne Kramer's approach to storytelling is to withhold any information that might give away the plot.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

When promising independent filmmakers decide to jump on the bandwagon and pump up the gore, the results are sure to be touted as visceral and unflinching. Don't be fooled. Kramer has even commented that the movie should be viewed as a modern-day Grimm's fairy tale. It's grim all right.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The result is an out-of-control, lost-in-the-funhouse experience.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A depressing piece of gun-crazy Hollywood scuzz that, with its gassy style and runaway immorality, makes a Tony Scott movie look like a Robert Bresson picture.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

I have a sneaking suspicion that Running Scared could become a cult classic.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

It's lower on the food chain than a mere exploitation picture because it clings so desperately to the notion that it's a serious movie about violence; it doesn't even have enough integrity to serve up cheap, sick thrills for their own sake.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's not just a bad movie it actually manages to suck the very hope out of the air, leaving behind a cinematic vacuum populated by mobsters, sadists, pedophiliac demon-people, and an overwhelming sense of futility that just makes you want to run in the other direction.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Running Scared is so desperate and surreally stupid that all you would have to do to see it as a brilliant sendup of everything that is corrupt, vulgar, sad, deluded and bad-for-you about Hollywood is squint.