The Running Man
In Edgar Wright’s far-fetched action-thriller Glen Powell enlists in a game show designed to kill him.
Leap of logic: Glen Powell on a hiding to nothing
Image courtesy of Paramount Studios.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has a lot to answer for. Last week yet another sequel to Predator opened, the first instalment of which the actor starred in way back in 1987. In his honour, his face appears on a $100 bill in Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, the original of which Schwarzenegger also starred in, way back in, um, 1987. At the time, Paul Michael Glaser’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1982 novel seemed quite novel, in spite of its comparisons to Rollerball (remade in 2002). Here, the theme remains the same: in the future, real people will appear on our TV screens in the interests of mass entertainment. But there will be games and the contestants will be playing for their lives, as we’ve seen in everything from Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000) to The Hunger Games franchise.
The premise here is that a member of the public will volunteer to become the sprinting figure of the title in order to win a phenomenal jackpot. The downside is that a team of crackshot gunmen will be following their every move with the express purpose of gunning them down. In addition, the latter will be aided by omnipresent floating cameras while the entire citizenry of the US will be encouraged to join in the manhunt in the name of live-streaming entertainment. It’s a grim lottery that no sane man (or woman) would opt for, however big the prize. Tapping into the bloodlust of the Roman games, the show is rigged behind the scenes so that the baying audience gets its pound of flesh and the network gets to keep its money along with all the ancillary profits.
Our hero is Ben Richards (Glen Powell), a family man on the breadline who keeps on losing work due to his temper and insubordination. Unable to pay for the treatment for his young daughter’s influenza, he breaks his promise to his wife and signs up to become ‘The Running Man’, whereupon, thanks to the miracles of manipulated imagery, he is instantly painted as a reprehensible rogue.
Besides the familiarity of the subject matter, the film suffers from a major case of implausibility. Like the violent video games it emulates, it seems to exist in a parallel universe in which people believe what they see on TV, where glass windows are as breakable as they were in the previous century and where Glen Powell can scale a building in a bath towel that is bafflingly bonded to his waist. Michael Cera has a neat cameo as a revolutionary who, mysteriously, sacrifices everything to show off his DIY expertise with explosives, while Emilia Jones flaunts her American accent as a woman who believes what she sees on TV. The director Edgar Wright keeps things moving at a helter-skelter pace, although the repetition of Ben Richards’ near-death escapes become tedious after a while. The finale hardly comes as a surprise, either, leaving nothing but a rather sick taste in the mouth as the human species of the future seems to be both so gullible and sadistic. Game over, thank God.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Glen Powell, Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Sean Hayes, David Zayas, Katy O'Brian, Karl Glusman, Martin Herlihy, Angelo Gray, Shelley Conn, Sandra Dickinson, Debi Mazar, Corey Johnson.
Dir Edgar Wright, Pro Simon Kinberg, Nira Park and Edgar Wright, Ex Pro Stephen King, Screenplay Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright, Ph Chung-hoon Chung, Pro Des Marcus Rowland, Ed Paul Machliss, Music Steven Price, Costumes Julian Day, Sound Ben Meechan and Jeremy Price, Dialect coach Jacob Hajjar.
Kinberg Genre/Complete Fiction-Paramount Pictures.
132 mins. USA/UK. 2025. UK Rel: 11 November 2025. US Rel: 14 November 2025. Cert. 15.
