Midnight Run

Director: Martin Brest

1988 / 126min / 35mm

Ex-cop turned bounty hunter Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) has been employed to transport bail-jumping Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas (Grodin), an accountant who embezzled mob money, back into custody. As Walsh drags a handcuffed Mardukas one step ahead of their pursuers, including Kotto’s harried FBI Special Agent, an unlikely intimacy and kinship evolves—familiar odd couple material in a road movie package, but elevated into the canon of ’80s action comedies thanks to the exceptional cast, with De Niro’s deadpan comic timing, to that point little explored, a perfect bounce pad for Grodin’s chittering, nervous riffs.