Pluskylang Great Film overall

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

bkoganbing I guess that when it was obvious that considerable film footage from the Guvernator's Red Heat it was decided that Jeff Speakman's Running Red wasn't worth a theatrical release. It was deservedly consigned to direct to video status.Footage from Red Heat may have been used but some of this plot is ripped off from the Sidney Poitier/River Phoenix movie Little Nikita. We get a Russian prologue here where Speakman is part of a hit team led by Stanley Kamel on refinery in Spain which is protected by mercenary Bart Braverman. Braverman personally kills Speakman's brother.Flash forward to 13 years later, the Soviet Union has fallen and Speakman, Kamel, and Braverman are all doing well. Speakman is living the American dream with wife and daughter, but Kamel and Braverman have really found America to be a land of opportunity. Only Kamel has slightly more legitimate veneer to him.Kamel summons Speakman to do a job which involves getting Braverman. Only he has quite a bit more in mind for him.Plot taken from one film, scenes from another. Should tell you how original Running Red is. For fans of Speakman's martial arts skills only.

tedg Spoilers herein.Cat's eye comments follow*.This is a film about a woman (played by Lisa Arturo, one of the faux lesbians from `American Pie 2') who works as a scientist in a secret plant in California developing outlawed biological weapons. She has many personal problems and has been through several marriages, murdering her last one in a fit of pique. Because her work is so unique and valuable, the authorities covered it up and placed her next door to a Russian defector (played by Jeff Speakman). That aging defector (code named Running Red) did not supply any useful intelligence to the CIA so has to `earn' his keep by looking out for his neighbor. He is having an affair with her, here noted by her stealing his `banana.' His .His daft wife has no idea of his past, his soured deal with the CIA or his affair with the neighbor, despite her hints. She is played by Angie Everhart who doesn't even know she is in a movie and believes her husband has had a job for the last ten years.The story is rather predictable. Old Soviet special ops buddies show up. They kill his lover (the woman he was supposed to protect), so he kills them. Along the way, we never know whether the resurfaced Russians are in cahoots with the CIA or not. Sometimes they seem to take control of the whole movie, for instance when the hero Greg is sent on a wild goose chase into literally another movie: a bus lures him out of `Running Red' into `Red Heat' in an attempt to fool him into thinking their purpose, one of Russian law enforcement. A bus gets hit by a train.All this oblique storytelling is symbolized by Greg's ability to shoot around corners by having bullets bounce off mirrored surfaces. This narrative is challenging and not for the simpleminded; for instance, many viewers may miss the importance of the bug exterminator.*Cat's eye comments result when nothing intelligent can be said of a film.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 4: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Obi-Norm This movie, like so many others of its ilk, uses the retired soldier with skeletons in his closet. In this incarnation of this familiar set-up, the 'hero' is a former Soviet special forces soldier who fled to the U.S., with many of his comrades, after the fall of the old communist regime. The reasoning is he had done so many despicable things in the name of Mother Russia, that his life would certainly be forfeit if he were ever caught. Sound promising? I thought so.Anyway, as often happens to ex-special forces officers trying to start a new life in the suburbs with their beautiful, super-model wife, child, white house with a picket fence, and an SUV, his old army buddies came looking for him to get a favor. Violence and mayhem ensue.The one thing that makes this film particularly noteworthy, however, is the bus chase. I'm a big fan of chase scenes, and this one caught my eye. In fact, it caught my eye so much that I remembered it when, soon after and completely out of the blue, I watched a movie that I haven't seen in years -- Red Heat, with Schwarzenegger. The similarities were so striking that I waited for days until Running Red was on again, and I tuned in just for that chase scene. IT WAS THE SAME SCENE. I don't mean it was a similar chase with buses. I mean the editor from Running Red took the film from Red Heat and spliced it into his own movie!I guess this kind of result should be expected from some low-budget fare, but the worst thing is that they included the part with Schwarzenegger destroying that famous fountain in Chicago, while the chase in Running Red was supposedly taking place in Detroit.I guess this is a satisfying enough movie if you want to see some overly melodramatic acting with amusing violence, all of it kept low on the moralizing, but sometimes the laziness of film-makers in this genre astounds even me.

Jake-149 I saw an answer print of this film at the lab. I thought it was really well directed for a low budget action film. Also I thought Jeff Speakman was better than I had seen him before. All in all a nice effort by the filmmakers.