Film / Midnight Run

Jonathan Mardukas: Jack, you're a grown man. You have control over your own words.
Jack Walsh: You're goddamn right I do. Now here come two words for you: shut the fuck up.

Midnight Run is a 1988 action/comedy film directed by Martin Brest, starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin.

De Niro plays Jack Walsh, an unfairly disgraced ex-cop turned bounty hunter charged with finding fugitive mob accountant Jonathan Mardukas (Grodin) and returning him to Los Angeles before the deadline expires on his bond. Walsh must travel cross-country while contending with: a rival bounty hunter; the FBI, who are trying to catch Mardukas; the Mafia, who are trying to kill him; and Mardukas, whose eccentricities make him a difficult prisoner.

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Tropes in this film:

• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: During his Race Against the Clock while trying to keep his prisoner out of the hands of multiple pursuers, bounty hunter Jack Walsh is forced to stop at the home of his ex-wife to borrow her car. Their argument about how she divorced Jack for a Dirty Cop, and Jack's brief but emotional reunion with his daughter (whom he hasn't seen in almost a decade) make for one of the film's most celebrated scenes.
• Anachronism Stew: At the time of the film's release $1000 dollar bills had been out of circulation for 20 years.
• Answer Cut: Mardukas asks Walsh, "Why aren't you popular with the Chicago Police Department?" while they're on the bus. Cut to Jimmy Serrano in his apartment.
• Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster: Mardukas, to the point that he deserves to be a Trope Codifier. First he buys himself time by pretending to be deathly afraid of flying, so Jack has to take him cross country by land (he's actually a qualified pilot). He then makes the most of the time he's gained by making Jack drop his guard, firstly by behaving like an apparently hapless dweeb, but at the same time asking Jack Armor Piercing Questions, offering him genuinely useful advice, and otherwise befriending him, to the point that when they finally arrive at their destination, Jack has become so fond of Mardukas that he lets him go.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • "Why aren't you popular with the Chicago Police Department?"
  • "What happened to you?"
  • Serrano to Walsh: "Does it bother you that another copper's fucking your wife? You know they made this guy a captain?"
• The Atoner: Mardukas sees himself this way; horrified to find out he was working for an organized crime boss, he felt he had to do something to make it right. So he stole $15 million of Serrano's money.
• Authentication by Newspaper: Marvin does this to prove to the mob that he's got Mardukas. Unfortunately for him, he photographed Mardukas holding the newspaper with the towels from the motel where they're staying clearly visible, and since the towels clearly have the motel's name on them, it's easy for the mobsters to get Mardukas without having to pay Marvin.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Jack and Mardukas, duh. Jack gets the Duke to LA before midnight on Friday, as he'd promised he would, but then lets Mardukas go without any prospect of reward. Mardukas is so touched that he gives Jack the $300,000 he'd been carrying all along as travel money.
• Big Bad: Jimmy Serrano, The Mafia boss who ruined Walsh's career and is now pursuing the Duke.
• Bounty Hunter: Jack's job after being unfairly branded a crooked cop. It still lets him catch bad guys.
• Bowdlerise: Grodin's rant about plane crashes was heavily edited for airplane showings of the movie, for obvious reasons.
• Break Them by Talking: Mardukas spends the entire movie employing this approach to Jack to get him to let him go. It works.
• Bumbling Henchmen Duo: Tony and Joey, the two Mooks who work for Serrano, specialize in Comically Missing the Point, idle conversations, and getting owned by Jack and Marvin in turn. Serrano himself refers to them as "Moron Number One" and "Moron Number Two".
• Call-Back: Jack gives the watch to Mardukas at the end of the movie, signifying that he's finally moving on from his failed marriage.
• Calling Card: Invoked. Jack leaves behind sunglasses as a way to taunt Mosely.
• Cerebus Call-Back: A Running Gag about Jack is that he constantly forgets that his watch is broken and he checks it. He eventually explains to the Duke that the watch is the first his ex-wife gave him, hence why he's still carrying it around.
• Chained Heat: Jack handcuffs the Duke to himself on purpose, but this becomes a straighter example when they're running from the mob while being handcuffed together.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Mardukas mentions to Jack early on that he tried to copy Serrano's computer files of his financial records as insurance, but he didn't have enough time with the cops almost on him. Jack is able to guess that Serrano doesn't know this, and attracts him into a police sting at the climax by bluffing that he has the disks and wants to exchange Mardukas for them.
  • While discussing the reward that Jack will get for delivering Mardukas on the train, Jack mentions the amount ($100,000) and Mardukas asks if that is the amount it would take to bribe Jack into letting him go. Turns out that Mardukas spent the whole film secretly carrying $300,000 on his person in a money belt, which he gives to Jack as a thank you.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Nearly everyone in the movie. Jack is highly honorable but not above doing a Look Behind You on Marvin constantly, Eddie swindles Marvin into bringing back Mardukas at a cheaper price than Jack's bargained bounty, Marvin tries to sell the Duke to the Mafia, and Eddie's secretary Jerry is actually The Mole for Serrano.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Jack's a pottymouth. So are Eddie Moscone and Jimmy Serrano.
  • The entire movie is a carpet F-bombing campaign. There is hardly a scene where it isn't dropped, repeatedly.
  "If I hear any more shit outta you, I'm gonna bust your fuckin' head, put you back in that fuckin' hole, stick your head in the fuckin' toilet bowl, and make it stay there!"
• The Consigliere: Serrano's advisor Sidney, whose advice Jimmy frequently disregards.
• Creator Cameo: Director Martin Brest appears as a ticket clerk.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: The above F-bomb example. Also, practically all of Jimmy Serrano's threats to his henchmen are like this.
• Deadpan Snarker: Jack is definitely this.
• Death Glare: Mosely to Jack, after this exchange:
  Mosely: (gloating) "What should be of paramount importance to you right now is that you're going to spend ten years for impersonating a federal agent."
  Walsh: "Ten years for impersonating a fed?"
  Mosely: "Ten years!"
  Walsh: "How come no one's after you?"
  • Walsh to Serrano, after Serrano asks how he feels about another man, a cop no less, fucking his wife.
• Did You Actually Believe...?: Serrano asks Mardukas this while he has him captive.
  "So I'm finally in the presence of greatness, huh? The Duke. The guy that steals money from the scum of the earth and gives it to the unfortunates of the world. I wanted to meet you face to face. Did you actually think you were going to steal my money and get away with it? I stopped by here to tell you two things. Number one is that you're gonna die tonight. Number two is I'm gonna go home, have a nice hot meal. I'm gonna find your wife, and kill her too."
• Dirty Cop: Apparently, most of the cops in Chicago were on Jimmy Serrano's payroll. Walsh refused to take bribes, and was thus unfairly drummed out of the force.
• Disappeared Dad: Jack Walsh to his family after being run out of Chicago. See Tear Jerker on YMMV.
• Enemy Mine: Jack Walsh, Marvin Dorfler, and Alonzo Mosely at various points in the movie.
• Everybody Smokes: Played straight with most of the characters, especially Jack, who lights up every chance he can get (and in late '80s America there are plenty); averted with Mardukas, who not only doesn't smoke but urges Jack to put his cigarette out for the sake of his health. Yes, kids, it used to be OK to smoke on airplanes.
• Event Title: A "midnight run" is supposed to be (by fugitive retrieval standards) a milk run. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Serrano thinks of Jack as some self-righteous loser for giving up everything to maintain his moral code. It's also why Jack's gambit against him works: Serrano never expected him to be working for the FBI.
• Evil Counterpart: Marvin to Jack. Jack does bounty hunting both for money, and so he can bring in criminals his own way, and actually treats them like human beings. Marvin is a brutish, selfish man who doesn't give a damn about his bounties, even planning to hand Mardukas to the mob because he assumes that Evil Pays Better, instead of bringing him into jail.
• Exact Words:
  • In one scene, Mardukas makes Jack promise that he will let him go in exchange for helping him get out of a river they both fell in, while Jack is barely hanging on to a rock and is about to be pulled into some rapids. Jack agrees and Mardukas saves him... and Jack immediately handcuffs him: he will let him go, sure, once he delivers him to the police at L.A.
  • Before you feel too bad for him, however, Mardukas is plenty guilty of this himself: While he repeatedly claims to "have money", it's in a way that suggests that he's got it stashed away in inaccessible accounts, which is a bit of a problem as Jack and Mardukas keep finding themselves short of cash in trying situations. Then, at the end, Mardukas reveals that he's had a money belt stuffed with $1000 bills on his person all along. Jack snarkily notes that "I knew you had money, but I didn't know you had money."
• Failed a Spot Check: Jack misses the big money belt that Mardukas has strapped around his waist through the whole film, even when he actually frisks the latter for some money to pay a car rental.
• Faux Affably Evil: Serrano is quite friendly to Jack and Mardukas, but only in a way designed to mock them and make them uncomfortable. He rarely bothers to put up the act for his underlings, who he's quite coarse and rude to.
• 555: "KL5." Also the number Jack uses to call Serrano from FBI custody.
• Foreshadowing: On a couple of occasions:
  • Mardukas reveals that he planned to make copies of his files for Serrano's accounts and use them to protect himself, but the FBI closed in on him before he could do so. Pretending that he has these files forms part of Jack's plan to rescue Mardukas and deliver Serrano to the feds.
  • After learning that Eddie has sent Marvin after Mardukas as well, Jack fumes that he's half-considering just letting Mardukas go in order to spite Eddie. He ends up doing just that right at the end.
• Good Is Not Nice:
  • Jack is crass, coarse, and willing to bend the rules quite a bit. But he still has a sense of justice, and can be generous to the criminals he catches...unless they give him the slip.
  • Alonzo Mosely is a decent FBI agent who is devoted bringing down Serrano, but he has no problem mocking Jack for his failed cop career, intimidating him, and taking things from suspects.
• Guile Hero: Mardukas. Pretending to have aviophobia so he can slow down his time to Los Angeles (it turns out he is a trained pilot), and using Mosely's badge to pretend to be an FBI Agent looking for a counterfeiter so he can get money from store clerks. If he weren't so concerned about Jack's safety, he could have slipped away a lot sooner.
• Hero Antagonist: Alonzo spends most of the movie trying to capture Walsh and prevent him from turning Mardukas in himself, but he's not unjustified in his belief that it will mess up his attempts to nail Serrano, and he has every right to be outraged that Walsh stole his badge and is posing as a federal agent, which is a serious crime. Once he realizes the two are on the same side, he agrees to team up with him to catch Serrano and not press charges against Walsh.
• Hidden Depths: Jack Walsh to Mardukas in a very effective scene when the pair is driving from Chicago to Amarillo. Mardukas realizes after getting a surprisingly honest answer to an Armor-Piercing Question that Jack isn't a Corrupt Cop but rather an honorable, unfairly disgraced Knight in Sour Armor.
• Hairpin Lockpick: Averted. Jack picks locks using a tension bar and a snapper pick, one of the very few realistic depictions of lockpicking in a Hollywood film.
• Hero Insurance: Yes, Jack helps the FBI nail Jimmy Serrano. But he also steals multiple cars (including a police cruiser), impersonates an FBI agent, impersonates a Secret Serviceman, robs a bar, interferes with an FBI investigation, commits multiple batteries against Mosely, and lets a wanted fugitive go free. He ends the movie at liberty, free to open his coffee shop.
• Honor Before Reason: In the end, Jack will always try to abide by his code of ethics. It’s why he quit the police, it’s why he refuses to take the money his daughter offers him even though it would be very useful, and it’s why he lets the Duke go in the end: he did what he said he would do, even if he won’t profit by it. Of course, he does, but he didn’t know he would.
• Hope Spot: Right at the very end.
  Eddie: Where the hell are you?
  Jack: I'm in L.A. And guess who I'm with? I'm with the Duke!
  Eddie: YOU GOT HIM?! Oh— YOU GOT HIM, JACK! I love you!
  Jack: Yeah, you wanna say hello? Say hello. [Leans Mardukas into the receiver]
  Eddie: Hello, you son of a bitch! WE GOT YOU, YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!
  Jack: Yeah. Now say goodbye, you lyin' little piece of shit, because I'm letting him go. [Hangs up]
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Eddie delivers a lengthy, impassioned speech about how much he resents Jack's implication that he's dishonest and untrustworthy. Leaving aside the fact that he goes on to constantly double-cross Jack throughout the movie, he's saying this less than thirty seconds after trying to shortchange Jack $300 from a promised fee.
  • There's also this exchange between Jack and Mardukas:
    Mardukas: Why would you eat that?
    Jack: Why? Because it tastes good!
    Mardukas: But it's not good for you... Why would you do something that you know is not good for you?
    Jack: 'cause I don't think about it.
    Mardukas: But that's living in denial.
    Jack: I'm aware of that.
    Mardukas: So you're aware of your behavior, yet you continue to do things that aren't good for you. That sounds sort of foolish, don't you think so, Jack?
    Jack: Stealing $15 million from Jimmy Serrano sounds foolish.
    Mardukas: I didn't think I'd get caught.
    Jack: Now that's living in denial.
    Mardukas: I'm aware of that.
• I Shall Taunt You: At least 50% of Mardukas's actions are a calculated ploy to throw Jack off balance by provoking, needling, and annoying him at every possible opportunity. The other 50% are just him being naturally annoying.
• Impersonating an Officer: Walsh impersonates an FBI agent multiple times, once even doing it in cooperation with Mardukas.
• Indy Ploy: Jack is very good at thinking on his feet, to the extent that he's able to come up with a plan to rescue Mardukas, get Serrano arrested, avoid the shopping list of criminal charges he accumulated in the past week, and get Mardukas to Los Angeles before the deadline to claim his reward while sitting in a police station under arrest by the FBI and surrounded by cops and federal agents.
• Ironic Echo:
  • Jack is delivering Mardukas into custody for a huge fee, which he hopes to use to finance a coffee shop, despite the fact that Jimmy Serrano will likely have Mardukas murdered in prison. Mardukas bitterly remarks "Hope it's a nice coffee shop." At the end, when Jack sacrifices his fee and releases Mardukas, he wistfully remarks: "Would have been a nice coffee shop."
  • After apparently shaking Jack off by clambering onto a train car, Mardukas taunts him by yelling "See you in the next life!" as he closes the car's door. Unfortunately, Mardukas fails to notice a nearby ladder that Jack manages to catch, enabling him to climb over the roof and through the open door on the other side of the car: "Well, I guess we're in the next life, John!"
• Irony: The movie literally ends with a nice little example. Jack walks away from the events of the film with a sufficiently huge amount of cash to open a coffee shop... but it's in large denominations, meaning that he doesn't have enough small change to pay for a cab ride home. "Looks like I'm walkin'."
• Justified Criminal: Mardukas. He stole from the mob and gave the money away to charity. It's the main reason why Jack lets him go in the end.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Jack commits a lot of crimes over the course of the movie, including impersonating an FBI agent, stealing a car, and robbing a bar, yet gets away scot free. It's implied that his deal with the FBI involved the charges against him being dropped, but even that's unusually generous of them.
  • Mardukas stole an awful lot of money and worked as an associate of the Mafia, as well as skipped bail. He ends the film walking away a free man, with Jack letting him go for the sake of getting even with Eddie's backstabbing (the Serrano affair having been dealt with through means other than him testifying).
  • A corrupt cop-who is implied to have cost Jack his job on the force-was promoted to Captain, and got to marry Jack's ex-wife.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Jack, bitter at the world after he lost everything, but still with his own personal code of ethics.
• Knight of Cerebus: Serrano has some humorous moments, but he's mostly played seriously. He's genuinely menacing and his presence darkens the film's climax, which is almost entirely devoid of comedy.
• Laser-Guided Karma: This is a movie in which everyone ultimately gets what they deserve, one way or another:
  • Jack, who remained true to his code of honour throughout the movie, succeeds in bringing Mardukas back to Los Angeles, and then after doing the decent thing and releasing Mardukas knowing full well he would lose his lucrative fee in doing so, receives a far greater reward than he expected.
  • Mardukas, whose only real victim was a ruthless gangster and who used the money he stole to help the needy, gains his freedom.
  • Jimmy Serrano is ultimately brought down by Jack Walsh, the honest cop that he framed and had run out of Chicago ten years before.
  • Alonzo Mosely, an honest fed, gets to arrest the mobster that he's been trying to bring down the whole movie.
  • Marvin, who is less ethical and intelligent than Jack, gets arrested for interfering with an FBI operation.
  • Eddie, who has double-crossed Jack repeatedly throughout the movie by playing him and Marvin off each other, loses his bond for Mardukas and, in all likelihood, his business.
• Laughably Evil: All of the bad guys have quite humorous personalities.
  • Marvin is brutish and immoral, but he's also extraordinarily dumb and incompetent. He's quite funny as a result.
  • Serrano's Co-Dragons Joey and Tony are genuinely dangerous, but they're also moronic bumblers who constantly goof around and screw up.
  • Serrano himself is so foul-mouthed and coarse that he's quite entertaining, and has several funny lines.
• Look Behind You: Walsh gets Marvin with this repeatedly. Until the one time that it's for real.
• Lovable Rogue: Mardukas, who is technically guilty of stealing mob money. However, he isn't at all corrupt or evil otherwise, insisting he acted the way he did because he was shocked to discover he was helping to launder mob money. He mainly stays hidden and runs away from the law because he knows he'll be whacked if he ends up in police custody.
• The Mafia: Who Mardukas stole from. They want him dead.
• Miscarriage of Justice: Walsh is a bounty hunter because he was framed as a Dirty Cop, which he wasn't.
• The Mole: Jerry is constantly tipping off the mob hit men as to Walsh's location.
• Mundane Solution: When Mardukas tells Marvin that he's deathly afraid of flying, Marvin's solution is to simply knock him out cold. Can't be afraid when you're not awake, right?
• Nice Guy: Jonathan Mardukas. He's an accountant, has a wife who he loves, a loyal dog, tries not to swear, shows respect even to those who don't return it, and can say hello in many different languages.
• No Indoor Voice:
  • Jack is forced to resort to this at the climax, when Marvin tussels with Jack during the sting operation, causing Jack's wire to malfunction, and allowing Serrano to sneak away with the computer disks. Jack sees Serrano's thugs moving in for the kill, and in desperation, yells out, "Serrano's got the disks! Serrano's got the disks! SERRANO'S GOT THE DISKS!" Mosely moves his agents in immediately for the save.
  • Eddie (played by professional angry shouter Joe Pantoliano) screams at least half of his lines.
• Nothing Personal: Marvin says this to Jack right after swooping in to take Jack's hard-won bounty at the beginning. Of course, it's delivered via F-Bomb.
  Marvin: Nothing personal, Jack, but fuck off!
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  Jonathan Mardukas: You're OK, Jack. I think... under different circumstances you and I probably still would have hated each other.
• Obfuscating Disability: Mardukas claims to suffer from aviophobia and acrophobia, which forces Walsh to take him off their flight to L.A. He doesn't really, and is actually a qualified pilot. The claustrophobia is probably real, though.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When Jack realizes that Marvin is planning to give Mardukas to the mob.
  • The two FBI agents who have tapped Eddie's phone, when Jack works out the bug and taunts them with a Poke in the Third Eye, have an exhausted, downplayed version of this, as they just sit and stare at each other with wordless expressions that clearly read "... Fuck."
  • Mardukas, having closed a train car door on Jack with a taunting "See you in the next life!", turns around to enjoy his freedom... only to see a pissed-off Jack clambering in through the open door on the other side of the car, having grabbed onto a ladder and climbed over the roof.
    Jack: Well, I guess we're in the next life, John!
• One Last Job: Walsh hopes to collect the large bounty from apprehending Mardukas and open a coffee shop. He succeeds, but the follow-up made-for-TV films have him still working as a bounty hunter.
• Pity the Kidnapper: Jack is a licensed bounty hunter, not a kidnapper, but otherwise the dynamic is the same, as the Duke annoys the bejesus out of him with his constant irritating questions. Interestingly enough, the trope is defied by Marvin: the moment he has Mardukas and he tries to swindle Marvin with his annoyance act, Marvin knocks him out in one punch and carries him away.
• Poke in the Third Eye: Walsh realizes that Eddie's phone is tapped and starts giving false information over it to mock the agents listening in.
  Jack Walsh: Where am I? I'm in Boise, Idaho; no, no, no, wait a minute: I'm in Anchorage, Alaska. No, no, wait: I'm in Casper, Wyoming; I'm in the lobby of a Howard Johnson's and I'm wearing a pink carnation.
• Precision F-Strike: Mardukas is generally pleasant and refrains from swearing, but after his attempt to explain his actions and plead for his life results in Walsh brushing him off, he drops one.
  Mardukas: "I'm in your way? I'm in your way? What you mean is you want the money for turning me in because that's all you're about. You're just about the fucking money!"
• Race Against the Clock: Jack has to get Mardukas back to LA before the expiration date on the bond, or else he doesn't get the money.
• Recycled Trailer Music: Ironically, the theme is so un-Danny Elfman-like, people are shocked that it's his. And every Buddy Picture and Buddy Cop Show trailer will use it, as well as Wunza Plot films too.
• The Rival: Marvin to Jack.
• Road Trip Plot: An eventful trip from NY to LA.
• Running Gag:
  • Jack keeps forgetting that his watch is broken and checking it.
  • Alonzo Mosely has a habit of taking things off the people he's interrogating/intimidating and “forgetting” to return them. He confiscates Jack's sunglasses at one point, and makes a habit of stealing Marvin's cigarettes.
    Marvin: Why don't you quit? It'd be cheaper for both of us.
  • Jack having stolen Mosely's FBI ID early on, he keeps using it to (mis)identify himself and get away with stuff, and Mosely keeps running into people who think that Jack's real name is Alonzo Mosely.
  • Jack constantly tricking Marvin, knocking him unconscious and stealing/borrowing his stuff.
  • Jack and Mosely, and the sunglasses. "Gee, I've been looking all over for these! Thanks, Alonzo!"
  • Moseley's deadpan reaction any time his underlings come to him with an update. "Is this good news or bad news?" "Is this going to upset me?"
  • Jack and Marvin, usually after knocking the other person out: "See you in L.A., Jack!/Marvin!"
    • With a Call-Back to Mosely's kleptomania at the end. "Yeah, watch your cigarettes with this guy, Jack."
• Smarter Than You Look: Mardukas is a fussy, timid, and milquetoast accountant. Yet this dude has managed to give the FBI, the Mafia, and (nearly) Jack the slip.
• Sweet and Sour Grapes: When they finally get to LAX after all they've been through together, Jack gives up on his dream of a coffee shop, instead letting Mardukas go. Mardukas responds by giving Jack $300K, which he's had the whole time, for the coffee shop.
  Mardukas: It's not a payoff, it's a gift. You already let me go.
• Tap on the Head: Jack, Marvin, and Serrano's goons seem to have a gift with knocking people unconscious with a single punch to the face.
• Tempting Fate: The Title Drop is an example; Eddie uses the term to mean that securing and returning Mardukas to custody will be an easy overnight job, as he's just a white collar criminal. Naturally, it turns out to be anything but.
• Title Drop: A "midnight run" is bounty hunter slang for a hassle-free, easy fugitive retrieval and return. Specifically, Eddie uses this when protesting the fee that Jack demands to retrieve Mardukas:
  Eddie: A hundred-thousand?! Are you outta ya mind?! It's an easy gig! It's a midnight run, for Chrissakes!
• Two Words: I Can't Count: Walsh grows aggravated by Mardukas' nagging, finally telling him to "shut up", but using more than two words:
  Mardukas: Jack, you're a grown man. You have control over your own words.
  Walsh: You're God damn right I do, so here come two for you; "shut the fuck up".
• Wham Line: Right at the very end:
  Jack: Now say goodbye, you lyin' little piece of shit, because I'm lettin' him go.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Jack gives one to his ex-wife for marrying a cop on the take. Later on, Mardukas gives Jack one when he realizes that Jack is about to deliver him into the hands of the same mobster that ruined Jack's life.
• You Said You Would Let Them Go: Walsh has fallen into a raging river. Mardukas extends a helping hand but says "Promise to let me go." Walsh agrees and Mardukas pulls him out. Walsh slaps the handcuffs on Mardukas and says he'll let Mardukas go when Mardukas is back in jail.