A mischievous moneyman suddenly flees with 15 million in cold hard cash, his life in serious objective danger as he's hunted by the mob.
He's also swashbucklingly jumped the generous bail that was put up for him, the furious cash poor unscrupulous bailbondsman hiring a bounty hunter to track him down.
The FBI also need him as a witness to put the ruthless mob boss behind burnished bars, and want the bounty hunter to securely help them in the strident pursuit of the creative malcontent.
The mob offer the sought after bounty hunter an enormous sum to hand him over, but he stubbornly refuses and makes his way risk-fuelled and daring.
The baidbondsman loses faith in his trusted man when he loses contact, and hires another bounty hunter to track him down as he makes his way across the U.S.
As to be unexpected the crafty numbers man turns out to be kind, not an exacting cold hamstrung blank but more of an uncle you see every birthday.
As time passes and the various interests slowly converge with restrained excitement, the somewhat brutal hard-hearted ex-cop has to admit he likes his quarry.
But let him loose and suddenly lose all that sought after quick-easy money?
His conscience battling sundry surmises.
As the journey bivouacs and gesticulates.
Intricate and inherently misleading the expedient Midnight Run diabolically proceeds, to obdurately search for a subjective answer to conflicting dilemmas interminably flounced.
With classic hardboiled streetwise dialogue the gritty script garners grizzly accolades, as the frustrated opponents blindly contend in an opaque contest fading and shifting.
If you were ever curious about Charles Grodin it's one of his more interesting films, he steals scenes and emphatically impresses as the conscientious bold endearing number cruncher.
Robert de Niro impresses as well as the hesitant once highly-decorated cop, who had to reluctantly find alternative employment due to endemic corruption on the force.
The action's constant in consistent flux as the myriad characters awkwardly engage, like a searing rough dishevelled carnival tempestuously twitching and chaotically toned.
With the old school focus on multiple characters conditionally respected within the script, given ample room to bombastically express themselves as the mayhem cacophonously resonates.
Should it be classified as Film Noir, there's no femme fatale but the bounty hunter's unlucky, and it's certainly grim and lowdown but not without intricate style and dignity.
High stakes storytelling nevertheless thrillingly occupying dissonant thresholds.
Lugubrious chivalry, delirious flux.
Skilfully shorn.
Not just another cop film.
*Yaphet Kotto's good too.
