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8/10, reviewer from the UK:

Nobody makes movies like Running Scared any more. Five years ago, this film would've been toned down by whichever studio released it in order for it to receive the lowest certificate possible. Bravo, then, to writer/director Wayne Kramer for sticking to his guns and delivering one of the most uncompromising, memorable and downright brutal thrillers in recent memory.

Joey (Paul Walker) is a small-time mobster hired to dispose of 'hot' guns for his bosses. One of these weapons (with particular value over all the others) falls into the hands of his son's best friend and is used to startling effect. Here is where the real fun starts. Joey can find neither the child nor the weapon in question, and he has only 18 hours before either the police, the Russian mafia or his own employers catch up with him.

Walker is surprisingly impressive considering the strictly one-dimensional roles he played in movies such as The Fast And The Furious and Into The Blue. Here he plays Joey as someone well aware of his impending death should he fail, and throughout he is totally watchable and believable. No more will audiences giggle to themselves every time he delivers a dud of a line.

The story occasionally flags, particularly in the middle of the film, but Kramer is not afraid to play with the camera-work to keep the audience's attention - whip-pans, CSI-style extreme close-ups, super slow-motion, sepia filters and colour bleaching are all used to give the film a gritty and somewhat unique look - take, for instance, the kitchen shooting about half an hour into the film, played from multiple viewpoints in both forward and reverse.

The film's charcoal-dark tone may be too relentless for some viewers, and the paedophilia subplot could be considered as taking things one step too far, but as long as you've got a strong stomach and can face hearing lashings of creative swearing, there's a lot of enjoyment to be found here. Unbearably tense, visually inventive and superbly acted from start to finish, Running Scared is the first real surprise of 2006 - it pulls no punches and thrills from its excessively bloody opening to its foul-mouthed conclusion.

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Speaking of movies that go over the top, "Running Scared" goes so far over the top, it circumnavigates the top and doubles back on itself; it's the Mobius Strip of over-the-topness. I am in awe. It throws in everything but the kitchen sink. Then it throws in the kitchen sink, too, and the combo washer-dryer in the laundry room, while the hero and his wife are having sex on top of it.

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