Ben Affleck names the “perfect” crowd-pleasing movie: “I can’t say enough good things”
Throughout his career, Ben Affleck has made many crowd-pleasing movies, from Good Will Hunting to The Accountant, and from Armageddon to The Town. However, in his opinion, the perfect crowd-pleaser is a film he saw as a young man in the late 1980s, and still loves to this day.
Affleck revealed his deep, abiding love for this film when asked by Alamo Drafthouse’s Guest Selects YouTube series to pick his five favourite movies. He argued that it would be impossible to nail down a cast-iron top five, because his favourites are always evolving, but then proceeded to rhyme off a list of films that have inspired him greatly over the years.
The list included David Fincher’s Se7en, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, and Edward Berger’s Conclave, easily the most recent picture to be included. For Affleck’s money, though, the most purely enjoyable movie he’s ever seen, and one that served as an influence on his 2025 thriller The Accountant 2, is a 1988 action-comedy that was overshadowed at the box office by a certain white vest-wearing, barefoot everyman action hero.
“It’s a magnificent movie,” Affleck gushed about Martin Brest’s Midnight Run, which starred Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin as a mismatched bounty hunter and Mafia accountant pursued from New York to Los Angeles by both the FBI and the Mob. “It’s brilliant and funny, and no one has ever been better than they were in that movie. Unfortunately, it came out against Die Hard; same weekend. Obviously, things panned out for Die Hard.”
In truth, while Die Hard did make a lot more money than Midnight Run at the worldwide box office, it didn’t quite blow it out of the water as history tends to perceive. Die Hard made around $141.5million, but it was a slow-burn affair, while Midnight Run topped out at $81.6m, making a tidy profit on its $30m budget. Either way, both movies were spectacular crowd-pleasers, but for Affleck, the De Niro vehicle edges it as the best of the best.
“Midnight Run remains, in my view, the perfect example of how you execute a movie like this,” he claimed, before explaining that the movie is “commercial and funny and entertaining and broad but specific and about people that I really care about. I can’t say enough good things about Midnight Run. You should just see it if you like this genre; if you like movies.”
Heartwarmingly, Affleck’s longtime best buddy and fellow Hollywood superstar Matt Damon has also gone on record about his devotion to Midnight Run, which he still quotes in text message threads with his college pals, including, presumably, Affleck.
“In college and in high school, my friends and I could probably quote every line of that movie,” he chuckled when speaking with Rotten Tomatoes about his own favourite movies. “My friends in college, we’re now in our 50s, but we can come up with obscure lines out of that movie and instantly crack each other up through texts.”
Ultimately, Midnight Run is a testament to the power of a well-made, entertaining, legitimately funny film. These kinds of movies stand the test of time because people return to them again and again, which can only build their reputation and foster a genuine emotional connection.
Sure, people love to watch challenging, intellectual fare that fires their brains and stirs their hearts, but when they’re done correctly, crowd-pleasing movies can bring joyful audiences together in an equally profound way.
