MIDNIGHT RUN (2020)
Starring: Alex Santana, Justin Huff, Alejandro Agudelo
Writer: Richard Hernandez
Director: Richard Hernandez
As a Halloween party breaks up, best friends Bryan (Santana) and Felix (Huff) decide not to wait for a possible ride home that may never materialise and set off on the long walk there instead. This instantly proves to be a bad idea as they are set upon and robbed by a gang of masked skaters. Now the two friends need to find the skaters and get their stuff back, encountering the odd characters who inhabit River City as they attempt to complete their seemingly impossible quest in the dead of night.
With the tunes of DJ Santiago (Gilbert Carranza) soundtracking the pals' journey across the suburbs and chapter headings signalling the next stage of their episodic adventures, this feels like a less violent and destructive GTA side quest combined with a reversed, low-speed take on Vanishing Point. In addition, a mysterious and oddly helpful stranger called Joe (Agudelo) shows up to assist in their mission. This stranger seems to be anything but to the residents of River City and it would seem that he has his own unfinished business to take care of.
Writer/director Richard Hernandez' zero budget feature - that's right, the budget for this one was ZERO dollars - quickly establishes a living, breathing, nocturnal community across East LA, replete with characters of varying viewpoints regarding what's morally and legally right and wrong. For some, revenge is not the answer. For others, it's all about shooting some bloke with a BB gun.
For the most part, Midnight Run is more a study of two guys who are forced to examine their long friendship in the strangest of circumstances. Their pursuit of retribution is helped and hindered by their own history and their possible future, a future which may split the two of them as Bryan has designs on leaving town and joining the Army. Unsurprisingly, there's a large amount of rethinking to be done as they get ever closer to the skate gang. That's when they've come down from the painkillers they've taken and the accompanying trippy back projection has ceased.
If you like your movies to nestle neatly into a specific genre pigeonhole, this one's going to give you a headache. There are many comedic moments but there's also a decent helping of drama and even a smattering of thriller elements, balancing all of these rather nicely. You even get a helping of action courtesy of a chase between a car and a skateboard and there's the opportunity to chill out with a brief musical intermission courtesy of the aforementioned DJ Santiago.
Santana and Huff are convincing as best friends, bickering amusingly over next to nothing for a lot of time but clearly having the other's back when the chips are down. These two heroes are pleasingly unheroic, having few ideas about how to get their possessions back and generally making random decisions on a wing and a prayer. Just like the rest of us, really.
Agudelo's character is something of an enigma and we're only given hints of his past, which is fun as we don't ever truly know if he's on the level regardless of his altruistic offer to help two guys he hasn't even met before. He's on a collision course with one specific resident of River City but again the facts behind the bad blood between them are left tantalisingly unsaid. If you need your exposition detailed and your plot threads tied tight, you may be left wanting. Me? I thought the opportunity to fill in the gaps - or just settle with leaving matters obscure - was all part of the enjoyment.
Midnight Run is its own beast, a film that isn't always concerned with its structure or its forward momentum. It does pretty much what it wants to do, when it wants to and if you're not willing to go with it you'll only end up frustrated. There are sections in the film where the two lead characters don't even feature, shifting the focus to the supporting players for a while. This might slow the action a little but it also paints a richer picture of the neighbourhood.
The patchwork nature of the story does result in the work feeling a touch disjointed on a couple of occasions but Midnight Run is never less than interesting because there's a genuine air of not knowing what the hell is going to happen next. Even when you're expecting a huge reveal and nothing happens, it's still fun. And it was made for no dollars. Imagine what Richard Hernandez could make if someone threw a couple of hundred bucks at him. I jest, but there's a serious point to be made here - I firmly believe this filmmaker could give us something even more out of the ordinary with a decent budget.
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