Desperation suits Paul Walker.

For at least two-thirds of Running Scared, Walker gives the most natural, highly energetic performance of his career. Pushed by a script and hyperkinetic direction by Wayne Kramer, neither Walker nor the audience has much of a chance to breathe, as Walker's Joey Gazelle bounds about like his namesake just to stay alive.

But we have no regrets. Running Scared grabs us by the hair and pulls us along through the Black Forest of mob mythology. There's not even time to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.

Kramer actually gives us two parallel narratives, though he tips us off to them by showing snippets of their combined culmination first. Joey Gazelle walks in a frightening adult world, but as a low-level mob guy, it's of his own making. Next door, however, lives a stoic little boy who steals one of Joey's guns, setting him off on an adventure through an underworld that has as much to do with fairy tales as it does just general low-lifes.

Heavily influenced by the non-Disney versions of folktales, Running Scared does not actually have supernatural elements. But Kramer remembers that to children, adults can be monstrous enough.

Thus to young Oleg (Cameron Bright) a crackhead can appear to be a raspy troll, and pedophiles reveal their real selves in shadows cast through beveled glass, gaunt, hungry and grasping for young flesh. Perhaps the youth sees more truth than anyone else in the film. Certainly, Kramer plays with illusions. Oleg's stepfather Anzor (Karel Roden) cooks meth and lazes about lamenting John Wayne's fate in The Cowboys. He has taken his obsession with the Duke so far as to have him tattooed on his back. Why not? John Wayne is a twentieth century folktale himself - an image portraying a myth.

That even seeps down to Pimp Lester (David Warshofsky), who constantly reassures himself that he is the mack daddy. When all else fails, he quotes Scarface, clichéd perhaps, but definitely believable - we've come to define ourselves by the stories our culture tells about us.

Though the film has depth, it is first and foremost a relentless action film. Since Kramer acknowledges his cultural debts in the story, what has to set his work apart is the style. Flashier in parts than Quentin Tarantino, the director at least manages to keep the meaning of his story in sight for the most part. He plays with time, showing us sequences in reverse to replay them from another angle. In a couple of places, he shows possible steps ahead.

For the majority of the time, Kramer keeps the film in muted tones, all the better to make his places of true evil stand out. While hockey arenas might survive the knock they get here, the cold affluence of upper-class suburbia appears quite chilling, even in cheery hues.

Unfortunately, the trickery gets distracting and ultimately proves unnecessary as the film's most powerful sequences do without it. Kramer also makes a rather pat moral choice for the plot that almost derails the movie. It built up quite a head of steam charging in all the way from left field, though Kramer manages to distract it with a little bit of the old ultraviolence. The plot device definitely derails Walker, though. It's almost as if he portrays two separate characters, and one of them we've seen him do time and time again. Pinocchio plays in reverse here; long after the Blue Fairy visits, Walker reverts back to the little wooden boy.

But what a time he gives us first. Bursting with raw energy that permeates both light and dark moods, he really commands the screen. Again, that could be Kramer's relentless pace, because child actor Bright seems more lively than usual, too, and his character is actually described as one who never smiles.

Tying the two together, Vera Farmiga plays Walker's loving wife Teresa with all due steel and warmth, doling them out exactly as necessary. She has the best scene, really, and makes a memorable turn here, especially playing opposite Elizabeth Mitchell as a grown up Gretel gone horribly wrong.

In Kramer's world, there are monsters, and going into the dark woods can change a man. Sitting in the dark theater might not change you, but Running Scared will still deliver thrills.

Rating:

Derek McCaw