Midnight Run (1988)
Directed by Martin Brest
A bounty hunter pursues a former Mafia accountant who is also being chased by a rival bounty hunter, the F.B.I., and his old mob boss after jumping bail.
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What critics compared Midnight Run to
The only thing I can think to compare Pineapple Express to is Midnight Run, which similarly mixed action and comedy in an unconventional but symbiotic manner.
The dumb, bantering hitman and doublecrossing friends recall Midnight Run.
In a sense, this harkens back to the "buddy flicks" so rampant in the 1980s, odd-couple outings like 48 HRS. and Midnight Run (no wonder iconic '80s band Huey Lewis and the News was tapped to belt out the closing-credits title song).
In the end, the film is solid entertainment in the Midnight Run vein.
It seems appropriate subject matter for a comedy that is itself a unique blend of action and comedy, the kind of buddy movie that they made a lot more of in the '80s (Midnight Run, 48 Hours, etc.), but that has kind of fallen out of style now that the Farrelly brothers and Will Ferrell have replaced dark humor with the gross-out variety in the "adult comedy" genre.
Despite its rusty mechanics and hodgepodge of tones, Pineapple Express convincingly imitates the mode of Midnight Run: on-the-run odd-couple comedy with gunplay and car chases.
Like Martin Brest’s “Midnight Run” (1988), a film that is a legend among comic actors, “Due Date” is not afraid to let you see alpha-male, hot-tempered Peter verbally abuse the delusional, vain and at times hilariously effete Ethan.
Do you think, as in "Midnight Run" and "Planes, Trains & Automobiles," the guys might, oh, I dunno, get to like each other over the course of the journey?
Soon, you can't wait for them to get to L.A. Road pictures such as Midnight Run worked well because the characters were so much fun to spend time with, no matter where the road took them.
With Due Date, director Todd Phillips takes the "mismatched travelers/road movie" genre -- which also includes Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), Midnight Run (1988), The Bucket List (2007), Get Him to the Greek , and many others -- and does nothing much with it.
The problem with Due Date is that these moments are far too few, with most being a variation on situations from superior road movies like PTA and Midnight Run .
I was disappointed.This fun buddy movie is something like a semi-slapstick Midnight Run starring Abbot and Costello.
Bullock and/or McCarthy are in every scene, driving the film in the way that Nick Nolte & Eddie Murphy drove “48 Hours” or Charles Grodin & Robert DeNiro drove “Midnight Run.”
Directed by Paul Feig, who also helmed the surprise 2011 smash hit “Bridesmaids,” and scripted by Katie Dippold of “Parks and Recreation,” “The Heat” is derivative of any number of mismatched buddy movies from “48 HRS.” and “Midnight Run” to the “Rush Hour” films.
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Having directed nearly every other male action star (and a slew of top-billed non-stars) in The Expendables 3, Patrick Hughes adds Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson to his stable in The Hitman's Bodyguard, an action-comedy that takes the Midnight Run template to The Hague.
It's not based on any pre-existing source material (aside from clear Midnight Run-esque premise), and it's actually great to see an original film get made in the summer that has been mostly defined by franchises, sequels, prequels, and reboots.
Viewers only need to think back to Midnight Run for a better-executed example of mismatched bad guys on the run.
Stuck in a downward spiral ever since, Bryce has a shot at career redemption if he can complete this “Midnight Run”-style mission, which he reluctantly accepts after he and Kincaid have made some obligatory attempts to destroy each other (acrimonious job history and all that).
…when one places the music side by side with Tangerine Dream’s contribution to Risky Business, they sound incredibly similar.
Fans of buddy action flicks of the 80s and 90s, such as "Lethal Weapon," "Tango & Cash," "48 Hrs." and "Midnight Run" will be right at home here.
Hobbs and Shaw are more like a Midnight Run or Rush Hour dynamic where they’re constantly trying to shake each other to go solo, and whenever one gets the upper hand, the other has to one-up them.
No one was expecting Midnight Run level repartee from Hobbs and Shaw, but is it too much to ask for a bit more than the who-has-a-bigger-penis stuff we get here?
Curiously, Gluck makes this rom-com feel like an action movie with a frenetic ticking-clock plot where the characters run around to race against time, à la Run Lola Run, Speed, Midnight Run, etc.
I can count on one hand the number of movies that make me laugh out loud, long and hard, no matter how many dozens of times I’ve seen them -- The Princess Bride and Midnight Run, definitely; Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead are about to be added to the list... and I think that’s it.
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“Uncut Gems” is like the dark, serious cousin of “Midnight Run,” another film about taking gambles, debt-collecting, and juggling a million catastrophes.
It’s an exact replica of Midnight Run, except the hero is a perfect goody two-shoes and the object of everyone’s attention is reprehensible past the point of redemption.