A Deadly Good Time

A little bit like the action packed, chase-filled version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, 1988's Midnight Run finds a pair of equally mismatched individuals making their way across the country. Written by George Gallo and directed by Martin Brest (Beverly Hills Cop; Scent of a Woman), the action crime comedy finds a disgruntled, ultimately unhappy former cop and present day bounty hunter, Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro), surviving the rigours of day to day life. The money isn’t particularly good and the job comes with some dangerous drawbacks (criminals tend to pull a gun on you). So, when bail bondsman liaison Eddie Moscone (Joe Pantoliano) offers Walsh a seemingly simple gig in which he is to pick up an accountant named Jonathan "The Duke" Mardukas (Charles Grodin) for an unimaginable sum (one hundred thousand dollars) – he jumps at the opportunity. The reason for the big ticket price is that it will save Moscone’s business, as the criminal is on the lamb, hiding out as he has stolen fifteen million dollars from gangster Jimmy Serrano (Dennis Farina), meaning that he will not get his money back if he is not brought in. Another catch, The Duke has to be back in Los Angeles by Friday – giving the bounty hunter a measly five days to track down the elusive man.

A true example of a hidden gem, the based-on-a-true-story crime film Kill the Irishman, directed by Jonathan Hensleigh and released in 2011, earned just over one million dollars at the box office, making it a motion picture that has sadly been missed by way too many people. Set in Cleveland, we are first introduced to our lead, Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson – Rome; Thor) in 1975, a criminal who always seems to be in the line of fire – at this point, he dodges death by leaping from his moving car after realizing it has been wired to blow. Hensleigh then transports us back to the beginning of the tale through narrator and cop Joe Manditski (Val Kilmer), as he provides us with a look at the complex gangland of Cleveland and the childhood of our main player (as he grew up on the same streets as Greene), eventually leading us to the point where Danny’s story skyrockets, in 1960, with him working as a longshoreman on the docks. It is an opening that in many ways pays tribute to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.

With two feet firmly planted in the historic noir genre of the 1940s and 50s, Joel and Ethan Coen went about making their first feature film, Blood Simple.. Though it was not, by any means, that ‘simple’. Creating a trailer long before production (it has Bruce Campbell in it – who never appears in the final motion picture), strangely enough, it does not feel entirely compatible with their final product, but somewhat like a distant relation to the iconic cult horror classic Evil Dead. On the advice of Sam Raimi (director of the above mentioned movie – who helped advise the brothers), the Coen’s went door to door with a projector and their trailer, seeking out investors. Think of it as the original GoFundMe. In just over a year, they raised the needed capital and got to work on their film – which, in case you thought that I made a mistake up above, contains a period after ‘Simple.’. A striking neo-noir, the title comes from an old Dashiell Hammett novel, "Red Harvest", a term that highlights the muddled, jittery and anxious mindset of people who have had a protracted immersion in violent affairs.

Narrated by the Grim Reaper (Gabriel Byrne), 2009's Perrier’s Bounty is an intriguing Irish film that mixes action and comedy within a crime story (all centred around a complex father/son relationship). Written by Mark O’Rowe (who also scribed the entertaining 2003 flick Intermission) and directed by Ian Fitzgibbon, they thrust us into the life of protagonist Michael McCrea (Cilian Murphy), a flawed, complicated figure who just happens to be sleeping in the afternoon while two thugs, Ivan (Michael McElhatton – Roose Bolton in Game of Thrones) and Orlando (Don Wycherley), sit on his couch eating his pistachios. Henchmen to a dangerous gangster, Darren Perrier (Brendan Gleeson), the duo remind the recently woken man that he owes the crime boss a hefty sum that must be paid in four short hours. Surrounded by an ever-complicated life, his female best friend Brenda (Jodie Whittaker), who lives one floor down, is struggling with her longtime boyfriend Shamie (Pádraic Delaney), while his father Jim (Jim Broadbent) arrives out of the blue and states that he is dying of cancer – the two have not spoken in some four years. Pushing them to the periphery while he deals with the more pressing problem of Perrier, he reaches out to a local drug dealer, Clifford (Domhnall Gleeson), as the man knows every low life in the city of Dublin. Getting directions to The Mull (Liam Cunningham – Davos Seaworth in Game of Thrones), a loan shark, he petitions him for some cash. Having none of it, instead, The Mull invites him to partake in a criminal venture with his buddy Dinny (Breffni McKenna), and Michael, desperate for any solution, agrees.