On the Run Reviews

A protracted piece of whimsy in which a meek young man is dragged from one threatening situation to another by a colorful childhood friend who's just broken out of jail. "I'm a travel agent who's never been anywhere," wails Albert DeSantis (Michael Imperioli) near the end of his long night of adventuring. His old pal Louis Salazar (John Ventimiglia), by contrast, claims to have been everywhere and seen everything; of course, more than half of what Louis says is an outright lie, and the rest is presented in a thoroughly self-serving light. A balding blowhard who isn't half as charming as he thinks he is, Louis also has the smarts of a frying pan — why else would he escape from prison with only two weeks left to serve? Having agreed to "loan" Louis money, clothes and sundries (even Albert isn't naïve enough to imagine he'll ever get anything back), over the course of a long and tumultuous evening Albert is kicked out of a peep show, clocked by a drunken barfly (Sharon Angela), harassed by police and targeted for death by a pissed-off mafioso. Louis and Albert's adventures are interspersed with long stretches of smarty-pants banter, some of which is quite amusing and some of which drags on well past its sell-by date. Cast members Imperioli, Ventimiglio and Angela are all familiar to fans of TV's The Sopranos; Robert De Niro's adopted daughter Drena (Diahnne Abbott's daughter from her first marriage) plays Rita, whom Louis first represents as his girlfriend but later admits was just a juror who was nice enough to send him a postcard in jail. Screenwriter Joseph Minion also wrote AFTER HOURS, which this film frequently recalls.