Midnight Run (1988) Hearkens Back to a Time When We Lived in Subtle Chaos

Hello reader! This is just a quick note to let you know that I’ll be spoiling Midnight Run, particularly the final scene, in today’s newsletter. Yes, this film is 36 years old, and yes, it’s perfectly enjoyable even if you can guess where the story is going. But I’ve now done my part to warn you in case you haven’t seen it.

1988 doesn’t feel that long ago, does it? Maybe it does if you weren’t alive in 1988. I turned two that year, so I have no actual memory of it, but it still feels familiar in the sense that I can comfortably picture my family, my home, my city around that time.

But when I watch certain films from the late 20th century, I’m reminded that it wasn’t that long ago that America was a land of subtle but omnipresent chaos (as compared to the very blunt and unrelenting chaos we’re living in today). And Midnight Run illustrates these everyday micro-lunacies as well as any film of its era.

The straightforward plot of this road trip buddy comedy—a bounty hunter must escort an “aviophobic” accountant from New York City to Los Angeles in order to collect a paycheck—allows viewers to get a glimpse of various parts of the country. Along the way, the two men stop in cities like Pittsburgh, Chicago, Amarillo, and Sedona.* Naturally, calamity and hilarity ensue.

This isn’t the kind of chaos that raised my eyebrows, though. Sure, there are firefights in broad daylight, high-speed police chases, even an FBI sting at an active airport. But I can suspend my disbelief regarding events like this in a film. Honestly, I think America is more predisposed to dangerous public scenarios like this than we were in the 80s. And there are other little time-specific things that didn’t bother me, like hitchhiking, lack of seatbelt use, or stealing cars/planes.**

Reader, it’s the little details in Midnight Run that shook me to my bones.

Here’s an example from early in the film. Marvin Dorfler (played by John Ashton), a bounty hunter rival to Jack Walsh (played by Robert De Niro), gets a call early on from Walsh’s employer who asks him to go after the same target. So what does he do first? Without even getting up from his hotel bed, Dorfler calls the credit card company and very casually ruins Walsh’s week.

Claiming to have lost his credit card, Dorfler asks to be reminded where he used the card last, recites the card number (which he cleverly memorized at some point in the past), and promptly gets an answer, thus allowing him to track this man’s whereabouts (the Amtrak office at Grand Central Station) and hunt him down. But that’s not the week ruiner. Just before hanging up, Dorfler adds “Maybe we ought to cancel that card, huh?” And just like that, Walsh’s only credit card is now useless. No confirmation of identity to speak of. Can you fathom having such power? Imagine all the scorned lovers and teenage pranksters canceling credit cards left and right back then.

The chaos is quickly reinforced when Dorfler gets to the Amtrak station. He hops onto the train and passes by an attendant who offers to help him. Dorfler doesn’t have to do much: “Yeah, I’m looking for this buddy of mine, Jack Walsh. He told me he’d meet me on this train.” Without hesitation, the attendant pulls out his sheet and gives him an answer: “Yeah, Mr. Walsh. He’s in bedroom D, next car.” If this were to happen in 2024, that man would lose his job.

Yes, it was legal to eviscerate someone’s privacy or financial standing in 1988. You know what else was legal? Smoking. Everywhere.

No disrespect to the smokers out there, but do you ever think about what America smelled like in the 20th century? Everyone smoked cigarettes, and they were allowed to smoke them anywhere you can imagine. In Midnight Run, almost every character is constantly smoking. Sometimes in more logical places like diners, hotel rooms, casinos, and taxi cabs. But then they’re still smoking at the police station, on buses, on trains, at the airport—on an airplane. Sure, we all know that every indoor enclosure was a giant ashtray back then, but can you imagine someone lighting a cigarette on a plane in this day and age? They’d be treated like a criminal. (And rightfully so, in my opinion.)

But my anxiety peaked at the very end of Midnight Run. Walsh gives the Duke his wristwatch to remember him by, and the Duke responds by giving Walsh a money belt containing $300,000. Of course, it wasn’t very common for someone to walk around a large metropolis carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars at the time. What stressed me out was the denominations. Walsh isn’t left carrying $20, $50, or even $100 bills. He’s handed stacks of $1000 bills.

I didn’t even know $1000 bills were still in circulation that recently. And they actually weren’t.*** But that means the rarity of these bills made them worth a little more by 1988—and that’s not even accounting for inflation.**** The film ends with one final gag as Walsh asks a taxi driver if he’s got change for $1000, prompting him to drive off in disgust and leaving Walsh to walk home from the airport. Can you imagine walking around any place with $1000 bills in your pocket? If someone handed me even one of those things, I’d stop whatever I was doing, high-tail it to the nearest bank, and hope I didn’t have a panic attack along the way.

It’s safe to say we’ve come a long way since the days of Midnight Run. Thanks to these small freedoms, life is a little bit easier. Even for bounty hunters. (Are there still bounty hunters?)

*If someone hired me to write a Midnight Run legacyquel (which shouldn’t exist, but I would take the gig, obviously), I’d have De Niro and his captive travel from Seattle to Atlanta. Might as well visit some different places along the way, right?

**Have you ever picked up a hitchhiker? I did once, when I was 16. An older man waved me down in the middle of my neighborhood, and I pulled over thinking my car was on fire or something. Turns out this gentleman just wanted a ride to a nearby house so he could cut their grass. (In case you were wondering, he didn’t murder me.)

***Large denominations—$500, $1000, $5000, even $10,000 bills(!)—were last printed in 1945 and then discontinued in 1969. We used to walk around with a year’s salary in the form of a single bank note. How did our ancestors live like this?

****That $300,000 would be worth just under $773,000 today. Nice little gift! (If you don’t get robbed or, more likely in my case, lose it.)

Midnight Run is now streaming on Netflix, and it is available to rent elsewhere.