Kerouacking - Midnight Run

Bounty hunter Robert De Niro. Shady accountant Charles Grodin. A cross-country road trip. Hilarity ensues.

Move aside It Happened One Night. There’s a new bus scene in town!

Midnight Run is a movie that falls in a weird cinematic sweet spot. If you ask a hundred people to list a hundred movies they love, it would probably appear a couple of times, but not with the frequency of, say, Jurassic Park. Or The Godfather. Or even Lethal Weapon. It’s void is that one that isn’t a terribly deep cut movie, but it’s off the main road just enough that it’s a little gem of a thing. Essentially: those who saw this movie on initial release or fit into the generation of its average magnetic pool know about it and sing its praises, but outside of that it’s been slightly lost to time. That will only continue as time goes on.

Nevertheless, there’s way more to this 80s movie where bounty hunter Robert De Niro has to transport shady accountant Charles Grodin across the country to bail bondsman Joey Pantoliano while avoiding FBI agent Yaphet Kotto and also the goons working for mob boss Dennis Farina. At the core of this movie is something that is quintessentially American, that fits within the canon of great American cinema without ever really reaching the classic status of all-time classics.

And its secret is 1988.