![]() ![]() ![]() The only time his performance really sparks is a sequence where he and Keitel go after one another. It just doesn't work here and it's really too bad. This here shocked me because I think the actor can do comedy and he's played a comedian before in the masterpiece THE KING OF COMEDY. DeNiro is actually pretty boring in the part and he just wasn't believable as this washed up comic. DeNiro is certainly giving it an A+ effort but there's just no soul or anything to the character. I'm really not sure what the screenplay was trying to do or say but it just doesn't work and the entire film just seems rather pointless. Sadly, DeNiro just isn't very good here and there's no question that he just wasn't right for the role. For the first time in his career I think he's the reason a movie is bad. ![]() ![]() I will never put someone down for wanting to make money and the actor has appeared in some lousy movies and some others that he was just lending his name to for a check but he always delivered a performance and made those films better. People have given the actor a lot of crap over the past decade or so for his willingness to do any film for a check. This was apparently a dream project for DeNiro who spent several years trying to get it off the ground. I'm not sure how try that is but if so that's a bit harsh because the movie isn't that bad but at the same time it is incredibly disappointing and rather pointless. Can someone explain how a movie director by Taylor Hackford with a cast that includes DeNiro, Mann, Harvey Keitel, Danny DeVito, Charles Grodin, Cloris Leachman and Billy Crystal could turn out so lifeless? I mean, how on Earth can you get such talent in one movie and the end result be so bad? I've heard that the film was booed and had several walk-outs during its premiere in Toronto. After an altercation with a heckler, Jackie finds himself doing community service where he meets a young woman (Leslie Mann) and soon them two kick it off as the comedian finds more and more going wrong in his life. The mob's team is deployed by Jimmy Serrano ( Dennis Farina), who grows increasingly enraged as his hit squads miss their targets.The Comedian (2016) ** (out of 4) Former TV star Jackie Burke (Robert DeNiro) is now performing in small and useless clubs where his profane and offensive act really isn't going over any more. The FBI is led by agent Alonzo Mosely ( Yaphet Kotto), who is enraged because De Niro has stolen his FBI identification and is posing as a federal agent. Grodin is afraid of flying, so the two men set out on a long, cross-country odyssey that involves train trips, a shootout at the Chicago bus ter minal, hitchhiking, riding the rails in box cars, and being attacked by helicopters. The movie develops that relationship during and between a series of virtuoso action sequences, after De Niro finds Grodin in New York and sets out to return him to Los Angeles. In "Midnight Run," where he is literally handcuffed to De Niro at times, he is every bit the master's equal, and in the crucial final scene it is Grodin who finds the emotional truth that defines their relationship. Grodin has been in the movies just about as long, has appeared in more different titles, and is of more or less the same generation, but has never received the recognition he deserves - maybe because he often plays a quiet, self-effacing everyman. It's harder to do what he does and allow the nature of the character to get the laughs, while the character himself never seems to be trying to be funny.ĭe Niro is often said to be the best movie actor of his generation. Here he proves to have comic timing of the best sort - the kind that allows dramatic scenes to develop amusing undertones while still working seriously on the surface. 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.ĭe Niro does not usually appear in movie comedies, and when he does, as in " Brazil," it's usually in some sort of bizarre disguise. But "Midnight Run" is not a formula movie, because the writing and acting make these two characters into specific, quirky individuals whose relationship becomes more interesting even as the chase grows more predictable. This sounds like a formula, and it is a formula. ![]()
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