With Robert De Niro enjoying critical and commercial success with Meet the Parents, one might forget that he has already had a good run with the art of comedy. Aside from his creepy turn as Rupert Pupkin in Martin Scorcece’s The King Of Comedy and as a priest with Sean Penn in the failed remake We’re No Angels, De Niro got to play straight-man to Charles Grodin’s whiney accountant in 1988’s sublime comic masterpiece Midnight Run. As Chicago-turned-L.A. bounty hunter Jack Walsh, De Niro must get to Boston to nab Jonathan Mardukas, a mob accountant perfectly played by Grodin, who stole millions from the mob and gave them to charity. Mardukas has disappeared and now Walsh has one week, but can do it in an easy ‘midnight run’ to retrieve him.

Things don’t go so well when you have the mob looking for Mardukas, or "The Duke" as he’s called. Added to the complications, the Mafia and its boss Jimmy Serrano (Dennis Farina) send out their own bumbling duo to get The Duke. Also chasing The Duke is the FBI with Special Agent Alonzo Mosley (Yaphet Kotto) in the lead trying to get Walsh to back off and The Duke to be a witness against Serrano. After Walsh apprehends Mardukas, things only get worse when The Duke professes his fear of flying while sitting in a first class seat with the plane ready to depart for L.A. Scratch the plane, on with the train. When things begin to unravel faster than a ball of yarn in the paws of a kitten, Marvin Dorfler (John Ashton) enters the scene as the other bounty hunter assigned to retrieve The Duke if Walsh doesn’t do it right.

What director Martin Brest (Scent Of A Woman, Meet Joe Black, Beverly Hills Cop) gets out of the two leads is pure gold. De Niro is strong in playing stone-faced characters and while this role isn’t different, it gives him a chance show off moments of tenderness and vulnerability. On the whole though, the film isn’t set out to pile up smiles and jokes, it’s the situations, personas, perfect casting on all parts and clever writing that bundles together this perfect comedy.

Grodin, who should seriously think of going back to his acting days (where he had a string of memorable roles in the ’70s and ’80s), knows how to deliver his performance with a consummate touch that greatly mirrors De Niro’s acting. Whenever you put De Niro in a movie, you must be sure that everyone who comes in contact with him on screen can hold his own and bring home the same, or close, caliber performance or it looks uneven. Thankfully, this film is filled with great actors working off a great script with tight and effective direction.

If you would like to go on another wacky road-trip to Comedyville, USA, there is a great film floating around out there in your local video store that should be treasured as a modern American Comedy Masterpiece. I’m talking about The In-Laws, a wild foray into the ridiculous written by funnyman Andrew Bergman who has also written/directed such films as Honeymoon In Vegas, The Freshman, and It Could Happen To You and directed by Arthur (Love Story, Outrageous Fortune) Hiller. If you want to complement the viewing of Midnight Run with another perfectly cast film this one is it. Peter Falk plays Vince Ricardo, a shady businessman whose family is about to merge with Sheldon Kornpett’s family when their children marry. Sheldon, a mild-mannered dentist, is played by Alan Arkin (Edward Scissorhands, Glengarry Glen Ross), to great success.

Vince, who has barely known Sheldon for all of two minutes when they meet at the marriage celebration dinner, gets him involved in some sort of strange international conspiracy/plot/scam or something even worse, all to do with U.S. Government currency plates. Vince’s rationale for using Sheldon is that no one would suspect a meek little dentist in any sort of international something-or-other. Through situations that Sheldon did not want to occur, he finds himself unwittingly caught up in Vince’s crazy plot. The action keeps moving fast, even into the affairs of a Central American dictator-led country that a Manhattan dentist should not be involved in (but thankfully for us, is.)