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Dom Robinson reviews
Midnight Run Distributed by 
Columbia TriStar
- Cert:
- Cat.no: UDR 90059
- Running time: 121 minutes
- Year: 1988
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 16 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
- Languages: 5 languages available.
- Subtitles: 11 languages available.
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: No
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Scene index
Director:
- Martin Brest
Producer:
- Martin Brest
Screenplay:
- George Gallo
Music:
- Danny Elfman
Cast:
- Jack Walsh: Robert De Niro
Johnny “The Duke” Mardukas: Charles Grodin
Alonzo Mosely: Yaphet Kotto
Midnight Run is a comedy-thriller starring Robert De Niro as an unconventional ex-cop turned bounty hunter who stands to collect $100,000 if he gets the lippy Johnny “The Duke” Mardukas (Charles Grodin) from New York to L.A. after he embezzled $15million from the mob. It’s just another piece of cake to a bounty hunter, also known as a Midnight Run.
However, the FBI want The Duke as a government witness and the Mob want him dead, so things are about to get plenty complicated, especially after he steals FBI agent Alonzo Mosely’s I.D. and poses as him.
There’s a fair amount of humour to be found here, most of it revolving around bad language, but it’s one of those films famously to be sliced to bits when shown on TV, with one of De Niro’s lines coming out on that medium as “Shut the HELL up”. I’ll leave you to guess what HELL is replaced by…
The picture is presented in a non-anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen ratio, which means you’re losing resolution as you zoom it in to fill the TV screen. It’s not particularly outstanding and there’s a layer of grain on this 12-year-old print which is made worse in dark scenes. The average bitrate is a fairly steady 7.66Mb/s.
The sound is a basic Dolby Surround affair, with little to get excited about.
Extras :
Chapters : The usual 16 chapters for a Universal-released-through-Columbia film. Not enough.
Languages/Subtitles : Five surround languages for English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. Subtitles come in eleven languages: English, French, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, German, Polish and Czech. However, whoever mastered these stupidly stuck them within the black bar at the bottom of the screen, so if you zoom the picture in to fill a widescreen TV, the subtitles get cut off! D’oh!
Menu : Static and silent. De Niro and Grodin. That’s it.
Overall, after reviewing Jaws earlier this week which had stacks of extras and a remastered soundtrack, it seems crazy to watch an age-old print with no extras getting served up for the same price of twenty notes and thus, this is the sort of disc that makes you realise why Columbia need a budget-priced label.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
0 OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.