Writer-Director Wayne Kramer's last effort, The Cooler, had at least one thing going for it: It constructed a remarkably oppressive atmosphere and held to it to the end. So it's a surprise that Running Scared, is so tonally inconsistent.
The premise is promising enough: Mob thug Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker, with grainy film stock and a day's beard growth struggling desperately to make those pretty-boy features look thuggish) is tasked with disposing of a gun that was used to kill a crooked cop. But Oleg (Camerson Bright), the Russian kid next door, finds the gun and uses it to teach his abusive father some manners. This is problematic for Joey, since police forensics will eventually link the cop slaying to Oleg's shooting, which will ultimately lead back to Joey. So Joey has to find Oleg and the tainted gun before the cops do.
This leads to some suspenseful scenes where, under the noses of investigators, Joey tries to recover the fired slugs. But then things start getting weird. We're introduced to eccentric hookers, pimps, homeless men and pedophiles. And the gun begins to trade hands like a hot potato. The proceedings quickly become silly, with the gun crossing characters' paths not once or twice, but three times, courtesy of wild coincidences. If the violence was toned down and Tim Allen starred, this could've been a screwball comedy.
By the end, the blood-soaked slapstick even includes slapshots as characters are tortured with hockey pucks on the neon lines of a blacklit ice rink. And the final gunfight consists of so many factions—including characters introduced only minutes before—it's impossible to figure out who is shooting whom and why.
And as much as it pains me to alert you to the following spoiler, consider yourself alerted. During the climax, Joey rips open his shirt to reveal a wire. He's been an undercover cop this whole time! So was it really necessary to chase the gun around? Couldn't he have taken care of the situation with a phone call? Perhaps when he had himself fitted with the wire? Then we all would've been spared this absurd mess.