The Running Man

 

This review may contain spoilers!

The Running Man is an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name, set in a world where the only way to escape the slum is to win big on a corporate TV game show. When Ben Richards' daughter falls ill, he takes a payout and joins 'The Running Man' in a desperate bid to save her and fight for his family.

The big thing this film has peppered throughout that I quite enjoyed is how media is used by corporations, and how we consume it in this day and age. The idea of watching 'The Running Man' is a thrill for the audience, but it's a bit of a cheap illusion ultimately. As we learn across the feature, the runners are picked based on their character and the outcomes are often scripted. Even the self-recorded videos the Runners make are doctored using A.I. or deepfake technology, which is a commentary that doesn't seem so entirely sci-fi nor outlandish. At the start of the film, we watch our protagonist Ben and his infant daughter watch a show where a man answers trivia while running on a hamster wheel. He either gets the answer right and wins money or he dies, which is ultimately what happens. Ben tries to distract his daughter by pointing out the cute hamster mascot. I think that scene alone says a lot about media consumption and how it can be presented. There's even a brilliant Kardashians parody in this, which draws a line around vapid consumption of media and how easy it is to be drawn into a binge cycle of consuming what is presented before you digitally.

I find Edgar Wright to be an extremely dependable director when it comes to capturing his project visually. The Running Man can get a little ham-fisted with the story at times, but the presentation rarely feels this way. Shots throughout show the disparity of this dystopian world, the hard-edged difference between the haves and the have-nots. The soundtrack for this feature is excellent, with some very fitting and fun tracks from the likes of Tom Jones and The Rolling Stones.

Glen Powell, who played Ben Richards, is a pretty decent lead for this dystopian thriller; Powell's moments where he feels most human are where his character work really shines. Lee Pace, who played Evan McCone, is a good rival for Powell across this; Pace has a hulking presence and really lashes out nicely in the final act. Colman Domingo, who played Bobby T, is a charismatic host who works every scene for all its worth; Domingo really knows how to dress up and inflate certain moments. Michael Cera, who played Elton Perrakis, was an absolute delight in this; Cera brought forward a character with a lot of conviction and a strong sense of justice.

However, the best performance came from Josh Brolin, who played Dan Killian. Brolin is having such a good run with his acting performances this year, even if this isn't quite as big a swing as Weapons. Here we see Brolin as a conniving producer for the Network. A man who doesn't mind trading in lives if the propaganda machine keeps on churning. Killian is an arrogant man; he sees himself and his work as untouchable by those below him. You get a sense of power from Brolin across this; he enters every scene holding the cards and expecting to play those across from him. I also liked the way Brolin portrayed the more manipulative side of his character, posing as a decent guy with a word of advice that would never actually help anyone. That final shot, where Brolin is caught up in fear but also a bit of excitement at the prospect of this being a 'good finale', is one of the more nuanced and well-portrayed character beats of the film.

I spent a lot of this movie trying to understand if it believed in the message it was trying to sell. At its core, The Running Man is about how we consume media, how media is manipulated, and most significantly, it is about corporate control and social inequality. However, the latter part of this rarely feels authentic across the film. Let's take the protagonist, for instance, Ben Richards is presented to us as a bleeding heart very early on; he's an everyday schmuck and yet the guy rarely seems like he is struggling. He almost seems like an archetype of himself most of the film, a man who is angry at the way the world works quite blindly. There's a younger character introduced in the final act who is there for Richards to shout out and point at the disparity of the class gap between them. This movie is obvious at every turn, and it loudly shouts its theme in a very dense, blunt manner. The entire film builds up to the protagonist awkwardly being worked out of a near-death situation (we don't see how) and then being propped up as a martyr without ever truly earning it. This is a film that knows what it wants to deliver, but perhaps the creative team behind it doesn't understand how to do a good poor versus the elite narrative. This is a showy action film with some decent stunts, but when it tries to make a point, you find yourself wishing it would find some substance to those ideas. The film also moves too quickly throughout; we barely learn about Ben's home life before he throws it away for the show, there are several side characters who we barely come to understand before they're shuffled on, and the final act moves extremely awkwardly in terms of pacing. This is a film with oodles of potential, but it needed to really be done at a more even pace, with a more dynamic approach to the themes and characters.

The special effects across this are mostly explosion-laden bores, but the glaringly bad one is the plane and the crash at the end of the film. It's an eyesore that pushes us into a rather shaky conclusion. The score for the film is rarely very present, and it certainly doesn't uplift the feature in any way.

Jayme Lawson, who played Sheila Richards, is a long way from Sinners here; Lawson's pining wife role doesn't offer much agency. Katy O'Brian, who played Jenni Laughlin, just feels a bit rudderless in this; beyond partying up and oogling other women, there isn't much to O'Brian's character. Martin Herlihy, who played Tim Jansky, is a weak effort at early comedic relief; Herlihy is an obvious push for a laugh, and this falls on its face pretty soon. William H. Macy, who played Molie, is a bit tired as the paranoid old ally; Macy's character barely has time to connect with Powell's, so it's no surprise there's nothing genuine there. Angelo Gray and Daniel Ezra, who played Stacey and Bradley respectively, were some of the more annoying ally roles across this film; Ezra, in particular, had this online persona that did not support the film at all. Emilia Jones, who played Amelia Williams, was in the unfortunate position of playing a character who felt like an afterthought; she and Powell really struggled to define how they wanted to play across from one another.

In a world riddled with films about corporate control and societal injustice, this adaptation of The Running Man comes off as insincere. I would give The Running Man a 4.5/10.