Midnight Run

Universal Pictures | Release Date: July 20, 1988

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

78	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 17 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Staff (Not Credited)

One of the most entertaining, best executed, original road pictures ever. Read full review

100

Mick LaSalle

Midnight Run has thrills, excellent performances, touching moments, slick plotting, lively dialogue, plenty of laughs, beautiful locations and finely detailed direction. It's an across-the-board success, the best new movie I've seen in years. [20 July 1988]

Richard Schickel

A performance like De Niro's, in a well-made entertainment like Midnight Run, is cheap at any price. And capable of restoring the audience's faith in the form. [25 July 1988]

Josh Larsen

It’s not the sum of its parts, so much as it is the way De Niro and Grodin make almost every one of those parts glisten. Read full review

Roger Ebert

Whoever cast De Niro and Grodin must have had a sixth sense for the chemistry they would have; they work together so smoothly, and with such an evident sense of fun, that even their silences are intriguing. Read full review

Dave Kehr

Graciously filmed by Martin Brest and imaginatively performed by Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, the tired concept yields a steady stream of little discoveries and surprising insights that add up to some uncommonly rich comedy. [20 July 1988]

Jay Scott

The virtue of Midnight Run is not that it does anything new; the virtue is that it does everything old so well. Read full review

Donna Britt

The film is a bit long because Brest wants to give you time to believe Walsh and Mardukas' inevitable friendship. We do. And Run adds poignancy without detracting from the action. [20 July 1988]

Michael Wilmington

There isn't a single performance in Midnight Run that doesn't have a pulse, that doesn't show the actors at their best or near-best, especially De Niro. [20 July 1988]

Brad Laidman

The funniest buddy movie ever and a generally daffy one at that. It features some of the most genuinely stupid and amusing tough guys in the history of cinema, and a tantalizing slow burn by Deniro. Read full review

Desson Thomson

Robert De Niro is one extended pleasure in Midnight Run -- a real actor putting his considerable talent to work in a well-scripted comedy. And he's more than complemented by Charles Grodin, a brilliant comic performer who has been wasted up to now in small roles or lousy movies. [22 July 1988] Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Miraculously, De Niro and Grodin turn this sow's ear into a plausible vehicle for a buddy movie, and thanks to both of them, this movie springs to life. Read full review

David Sterritt

Grodin is brilliant, though, practically stealing the movie without an extra word or unnecessary gesture. He's an uncommonly talented actor, and it's good to see him in a movie that gives him a chance to show his stuff. [22 July 1988]

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Non Credited)

Director Martin Brest has allowed the actors to improvise, and their resulting interaction is more realistic, funny, and surprising than that of any buddy film released in the last several years. Read full review

Hal Hinson

Too routinely formulaic to be anything more than modestly diverting. But as modest diversions go it cruises along at a reasonably brisk pace and, in the smaller details -- the off-in-the-margins doodling -- it has its rewards. [20 July 1988] Read full review

Vincent Canby

Mr. De Niro and Mr. Grodin are lunatic delights, which is somewhat more than can be said for the movie, whose mechanics keep getting in the way of the performances. [20 July 1988, p.C15]

Stanley Kauffmann

Midnight Run is two films. One is a succession of bright, razor-edge, nutty dialogues between two men. The other is the plot that keeps them together, which is stale and full of boring violent-comic action. [29 Aug 1988]