If
you have ever wondered about the mark-up on premium cocaine, this film explains
it all. A lot of people in the smuggling chain touch each shipment, so that
necessarily escalates the price. It also means a lot of low-level drug-runners
have an opportunity to cut and siphon off the product. “The Boss’s”
semi-retired lieutenant, known simply as “The Cook,” gets pulled back into
service to investigate their network in screenwriter-director Jason Cabell’s Running with the Devil, which opens this
Friday in New York.
The
Boss is not pleased about the adulterated junk his outfit has inadvertently put
on the street, but his minimal concern comes too late for “The Agent in Charge,”
whose sister and brother-in-law overdose from its toxicity. It will be personal
for her as she pursues the far-flung drug operation, but it is just another day
at the office for the Cook when he arrives in Colombia, even though he was
hoping to mostly handle his work via telecommuting.
Starting
with “The Farmer,” the Cook and his colleague, “The Executioner” (his role is
pretty clear), follow and test the shipment as it makes its way from “The
Farmer” up through Mexico. However, it turns out the creep lethally cutting the
cocaine is the Cook’s old crony in the States, known only as “The Man” (but he
really isn’t).
Despite
what we have been conditioned to expect, Running
is far more ambitious than most Nic Cage VOD movies-of-the-week (unlike 211 or Looking Glass). Presumably, that is why he signed on, even though
he does not have much opportunities for his patented raging and roaring. The
Cook is calm and reserved. That is why he is effective. Instead, it is Laurence
Fishburne who gets to careen from meltdown to meltdown as the Man. He is a
complete bug-eyed, profusely sweating, out-of-control mess as the Man. This
could very well be his most in-your-face, let-it-all-hang-out performance since
What’s Love Got to Do with It.
Awkwardly, he is also involved in all the film’s dirty parts, some of which are
pretty gross.
Believe
it or not, Cage does world-weary resignation pretty well as the Cook. Barry
Pepper and Cole Hauser both project menacing professionalism in spades, as the
Boss and the Executioner. However, Adam Goldberg’s “Snitch” is a little too
schticky to be credible.
