You fucked up, Kramer. You fucked up.

Bad cinematography, silly plot twists and moral flaws is what you get from “Running Scared”.

Joey Gazelle is a low level mob who disposes of the guns used for killing dirt cops for his mob boss. However, Joey hides the guns in his basement instead of throwing them away as leverage against his boss. When Joey’s son and his best friend Oleg sees Joey hiding the guns from a botched drug deal, Oleg steals the gun and shoots his abusive stepfather with it. The situation goes wrong when it turns out the stepfather is the nephew of a psychotic Russian mob boss, who happens to be in the business with Joey’s boss on a gasoline scam, which now also suspects Joey gave Oleg the gun on purpose. Now Joey’s also got a surviving dirty cop from the botched drug deal on his neck and the gun used by Oleg out on the street changing hands.

“Paul Walker” plays Joey Gazelle, and in a sense he shows that he can do more than just put on a macho smile like in “The Fast and The Furious”. But still, his performance and accent is far from good, and the things he does are very questionable. The only believable actor in the movie is Vera Farmiga, who acts as Joey’s wife Teresa. She managed to avoid being over the top and acted more casual.

“Wayne Kramer” is an unknown director, and I would prefer he stayed that way. Especially the cinematography is bad. Kramer uses quick cuts and cheap zoom effects throughout the movie in an annoying way and to hide the bad coreography, which can particularly be seen during the intro- and iceskate-scenes.

“Running Scared” tries to be unique. It certainly has a dark and gritty feel to it, but unfortunately it tries to be too obscene. The scriptwriters seem to have put in as many swearing-words as possible in order to give the viewers a shocking experience, but this backfires as it seems unnatural when the actors force out one fuck-word after another. The ending is filled with several plot twists, but in essence is nothing more than totally ridiculous and throws the whole premise of the movie into the garbage.