Running Scared

Nonstop banter between the two stars is rowdy, intimate, natural and often very funny. Hyams keeps most of it fresh, including the action ending, staged within one of Chicago’s architectural spectacles, the cavernous, glass-enclosed Illinois State Building. Read full review

I liked the smaller-scale scenes the best, the ones where Hines and Crystal were doing their stuff. Read full review

With their sloppy slapstick and wet Menudo jokes, one only wonders why more people aren't out to kill them. But Crystal and Hines do flavour the film with genuine warmth, and despite some cheap gags, work well together to produce some truly funny moments. Read full review

Crystal and Hines are immediately likable on the screen, so the fact that Running Scared isn`t all that we expect must be due to the script. The film`s ending does leave room for a sequel. If one is made, director Hyams should get Crystal and Hines a better story as well as that bar in Florida. Read full review

Though a "summer" movie set in wintery Chicago might seem less than logical, this one does what good escapist fare should: loses you in a world with enough excitement and fun that surrender becomes easy. [27 June 1986, p.D1]

Running Scared's razor-crisp editing (by James Mitchell) shows that you can combine mayhem and laughs. But the action becomes huge, cartoony, out of scale, crushing the warmth Crystal and Hines have built up. And the movie is too long by about 15 minutes, a deadly thought for a comedy. Read full review

Hines and Crystal succeed in creating a new buddy team that ranks with the likes of Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Read full review

There is something disturbing in the way the film elevates cynicism and detachment into heroic attitudes. Read full review

The comedy gets crushed just as surely as our heroes' cop car does in a compactor. This is a shame, because Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal, who play the daredevil cops who banter their way through these bullet-strewn streets, are two extremely likable performers who deserve a director more attuned to their charms. [30 June 1986, p.60]

Not a moment lasts longer than itself - even the jokes have no resonance, and certainly nothing other than the jokes has consequence. Running Scared is a mediocrity from any angle, but it serves quite well as a prototype of the new Hollywood product. [27 June 1986, p.D5]

Decent premises and the promise of Billy Crystal pale in a film that fronts up to, then whimpers away from, the prospect of leaping out of its genre's boundaries. Read full review

Such an attenuated plot might be fine if Hines were allowed to dance (he isn't) or the jokes were funnier (they're not). Director Peter Hyams has the comic timing of a tax auditor, but at least he can build a car chase, and if you stick around till the end (you shouldn't), there is an expertly photographed shoot-out staged in the Illinois State Building, a 14-story glass and metal bird cage that would have fit nicely into Hyams' previous film, "2010." [30 June 1986, p.C3]

Still another, thoroughly depressing demonstration of the extent to which television now dictates the style and the manners of so many of the movies we see in theaters. Read full review

Running Scared, ha. They ought to call this police story "Re-Running Scared." It's as cliche- riddled as Scarface's limo. [27 June 1986, p.29]