Running Scared 2006

As the film opens, Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker) is chauffeuring Oleg Yugorsky (Cameron Bright), a young boy with a telling crimson smudge on his shirt, hinting at a gruesome encounter. But before we’re immersed in the present-day chaos, the narrative takes us back in time to unravel the tangled threads of an earlier fateful evening. Eighteen hours prior, Joey, a small-time mafioso, is engaged in a high-stakes drug deal with his boss Tommy (Johnny Messner) and associate Sal when a trio of masked men suddenly burst into the scene, seeking to pilfer the illicit goods and cash. The ensuing firefight claims the lives of all involved parties except for their leader, who flees for cover. As panic sets in among the mobsters, Tommy instructs Joey to rid themselves of the murder weapons, handing over two guns with a solemn warning.

However, Joey’s conscience gets the better of him, and instead of disposing of the deadly instruments, he takes them home to his wife Teresa (Vera Farmiga) and son Nicky (Alex Neuberger), stashing them in the basement. Unbeknownst to Joey, his son and his friend Oleg from next door have been observing the proceedings from a hidden vantage point. As fate would have it, Oleg returns home to his abusive stepfather Anzor Yugorsky (Karel Roden), a ruthless operator with ties to the Russian mob’s Ivan Yugorsky (John Noble). Anzor runs a clandestine meth lab in their backyard, where he frequently brutalizes Oleg’s mother Mila (Ivana Miletic) without mercy. In a desperate bid for escape, Oleg retrieves a nickel-plated .38 pistol he had pilfered from Joey’s basement and uses it to silence Anzor’s cruel advances.

Meanwhile, the Gazelle family is disrupted by the sounds of gunfire emanating from next door, prompting Joey to rush over and find his neighbor wounded and Oleg missing. As Anzor provides a vivid description of the weapon used in the shooting, Joey realizes that Oleg must have stolen one of the murder weapons, setting off a frantic search for the young boy and the deadly firearm.

As chaos erupts in the nearby park, Oleg finds himself in a desperate bid for freedom, pursued by Joey and Nicky who are hot on his heels. A homeless man intervenes, snatching Oleg’s gun and dragging him into a sordid public toilet where drugs and danger lurk. The criminals’ violent confrontation provides Oleg with the window he needs to make a break for it, escaping with nothing but the gun. In his haste, he stumbles upon Lester, a ruthless pimp, brutally mistreating one of his prostitutes, Divina. When the pimp brandishes a knife, threatening to cut her down, Oleg draws his own gun, only to discover it’s empty. Just as all hope seems lost, Divina takes matters into her own hands, knocking Lester unconscious and preparing to make a run for it. However, she notices Oleg struggling with a severe cough and decides to help him out, taking him to a pharmacy to procure an inhaler. When the pharmacist refuses, she turns to drastic measures, brandishing the gun and intimidating him into compliance.

Meanwhile, the corrupt cop Rydell (Chazz Palminteri) briefs Tommy on Oleg’s predicament, revealing that Joey has lost the gun, which is now in the young boy’s possession. Informed of this development, Frankie Perello (Arthur J. Nascarella), the Italian mob boss, summons Joey to a diner, demanding that he produce evidence that the gun used to take out Anzor didn’t come from the police shootout. Frankie’s motives are twofold: he and Yugorsky are cooking up a deal involving gasoline, and he wants Oleg found because his involvement could jeopardize their partnership.

As events unfold, Nicky happens upon Oleg and Divina at the same diner, following them into the establishment. Oleg and Joey leave, but not before stashing the gun in a toilet tank, where it remains hidden. The brothers return to the diner, only to find that the gun has vanished. Oleg approaches Divina, pleading with her to take him under her wing and spirit him away from his troubles. However, their plans are foiled when police arrive, arresting Divina and taking Oleg into custody.

At the station, Rydell conducts an interrogation, trying to extract the location of the gun from Oleg’s reluctant lips. The young boy remains tight-lipped, earning himself a release back into the care of his stepfather.

As Teresa’s pleas for Mila to seek refuge in a shelter fall on deaf ears, Mila reveals the stark truth about her past - a life of prostitution in Moscow, orchestrated by Yugorsky, which culminated in pregnancy and a desperate refusal to terminate. Desperate to protect his wife and unborn child, Yugorsky dispatched Anzor to eliminate the threat, but instead, he chose to marry Mila, affording her a semblance of safety.

Meanwhile, back at the apartment, Anzor’s attempts to extract information from Oleg take an unexpected turn when the young boy makes a break for it and hides inside a parked van. The unsuspecting couple, Dez (Bruce Altman) and Edele (Elizabeth Mitchell), mistake Oleg for one of their own and whisk him away with their two children to their cozy apartment. As they lead Oleg into a sprawling playroom filled with an array of toys and a camera, he can’t shake the feeling that something is amiss.

As his discomfort grows, Oleg complains of stomach troubles and requests permission to use the bathroom, only to find himself trapped in a situation that’s rapidly spiraling out of control. In his bid for escape, Oleg stumbles upon Edele’s purse near the door and helplessly grabs her cellphone. Edele, sensing Oleg’s distress, calmly guides him to the medicine cabinet, where he’s instructed to search for a prescription bearing a crucial address. As Teresa Gazelle’s urgent voice echoes in his ear, warning him of impending danger, surreal shadows begin to writhe across the walls like dark specters.

Just as Dez and Edele are about to burst into the bathroom, Oleg finds himself caught, phone still clutched in hand - a tangible connection to the outside world and the promise of rescue.

As Teresa approaches the apartment complex, a sense of unease settles over her like a shroud. With a growing unease, she smashes through the front door, glass scattering everywhere, and knocks loudly on the entrance. It’s then that Edele emerges, her modesty preserved only by a thin robe, and Dez is hastily instructed to usher their children into the bedroom. Teresa’s concerns are piqued when she reveals Oleg has been in touch from this very address. Refusing to budge, Edele stubbornly bars the way until Teresa brandishes an ultimatum: call the authorities or she will. Reluctantly, Edele relents, allowing Teresa into the apartment.

As Teresa begins her search, her gaze sweeps across the sterile space, taking in every detail. But despite scouring the entire apartment, including the bedroom where the “children” slumber peacefully, Oleg remains elusive. Just as she’s about to leave, a nagging sense of incongruity pricks at her conscience. She forces herself back inside, pointing out the glaring omission: not a single photograph of their offspring adorns these walls. Edele attributes this oversight to recent moves and storage still pending, but Teresa is undeterred. With growing unease, she continues her search, Dez’s knowing nods drawing her attention to a closet in the playroom.

It’s there that she stumbles upon Oleg, his body bound and gagged, with a plastic bag pulled tight over his head. A gun pressed to the husband and wife duo’s heads, Teresa revives Oleg with a series of swift CPR compressions. As he regains consciousness, she instructs him to fetch the remaining children and await her outside. Dez, meanwhile, makes an offer: a hundred thousand dollars in diamonds from their safe if only she’ll take Oleg and depart. Ignoring this proposal, Teresa’s attention is drawn to a collection of disturbing artifacts within the closet: children’s costumes, plastic body bags, surgical instruments, and DVD cases bearing the names of tiny victims.

The playroom floor, she notices with rising horror, is completely shrouded in plastic sheeting. The gravity of the situation becomes clear as Teresa demands Dez’s phone and dials the authorities, reporting gunfire at this very address. Hanging up, she turns her attention to the pair before her, her eyes burning with a fierce determination. With a cold calculation, she takes aim, terminating Dez and Edele’s lives with a deadly precision.

Joey’s relentless pursuit of the gun leads him on a wild goose chase, ultimately tracking it down to the owner of a body shop, only to discover that it was sold to none other than Lester the pimp. Joey enlists Oleg’s help to retrieve the weapon, but their mission is hijacked by Tommy and Sal, who coerce Joey into following them to an abandoned train yard. Leaving Oleg behind, they arrive at the scene where Tommy threatens to make an example out of Joey for his mistake, only to suddenly take out Sal with a brutal display of violence. It transpires that Sal had been arrested and had agreed to become an informant, sealing his own fate.

Tommy then manipulates events by activating a bomb in a package he believes contains the gun, taking out Rydell as the unsuspecting victim arrives at the train station. With Oleg now in tow, Tommy takes them on a detour to a hockey rink, where they converge with Italian and Russian mob bosses, including Anzor. As Joey is held down on the ice by the Russian mobsters, he’s subjected to a barrage of slap shots courtesy of the opposing team.

Yugorsky demands that Oleg reveal the source of the gun, but when he refuses, the Russian boss orders Anzor to take out his nephew. Joey pleads with Anzor, who hesitates before ultimately dropping the gun and meeting his own demise at the hands of his uncle. As the situation spirals out of control, Joey attempts to negotiate with Yugorsky, revealing that Frankie had been seeking revenge against Anzor for cooking meth in their neighborhood, and that the gun belonged to Tommy.

Tommy pulls a gun on Joey, prompting an all-out shootout between the two factions, leaving everyone except Frankie dead or wounded. Frankie manages to take out Yugorsky before turning his attention to Joey, only to be met with a shocking revelation: Joey is an undercover FBI agent, and even his own wife has no idea about his true identity. Oleg draws his gun on Frankie, giving Joey the opportunity to grab the shotgun and deliver the finishing blow.

As Joey and Oleg make their escape from the hockey rink, they’re greeted by a team of FBI agents, who inform Joey that they’ve lost his signal in New Jersey. The mission has gone awry, but Joey remains one step ahead, his cover intact for now.

As the morning sun rises over the cityscape, Joey takes his friend Oleg out for a hearty breakfast, but their idyllic start is shattered when Lester, a notorious pimp, storms into the diner. The air is thick with tension as Lester brandishes a knife, prompting Joey to intervene and defuse the situation. However, things quickly escalate as Lester reveals a chrome-plated snub nose 38, a weapon that has been the subject of Joey’s obsessive search. A brutal fight ensues, culminating in Joey’s tragic decision to take down Lester, leaving them both covered in blood.

In a separate and devastating turn of events, Mila becomes convinced that Oleg is lost forever and, consumed by grief and desperation, takes drastic action. She locks herself away in the shed containing their meth lab, surrounded by the toxic remnants of their troubled lives. With a heavy heart, she sets her sights on the propane tank, and with a deep breath, ignites the flames, sacrificing her own life to destroy the evidence of their illicit activities.

As the inferno rages through the backyard, Teresa and Nicky emerge from their house, oblivious to the chaos unfolding mere feet away. They’re met instead by Joey’s frantic arrival, his body wracked with blood loss as he careens down the street in a desperate bid for help. The trio’s world is further shattered when they collide with the reality of Joey’s mortal wounds, and with his last gasp, he succumbs to his injuries.

In the aftermath of this senseless violence, the trio gathers at Joey’s funeral, their grief and anger palpable as they pay their respects to a man whose life was forever scarred by the demons that haunted him. As the city slowly fades from view, they embark on a journey to a remote farmhouse, where the repaired Mustang – a symbol of Joey’s enduring spirit – awaits them in the driveway.

As Teresa perches atop the car’s bumper, her words are laced with a mix of sorrow and resolve: “Don’t ever ask me to bury you again, Joey.” It’s as if she’s pleading with the universe to spare their lives from further tragedy. But fate has other plans, and it’s not until Oleg – now an integral part of their makeshift family – emerges from beneath the car that reality is reasserted. In a poignant moment of closure, Joey wraps his arms around Nicky and Oleg, drawing them into a shared embrace as they begin to rebuild their lives amidst the ashes of their shattered world.