Ben Richards (Glen Powell), a factory worker with anger issues, struggles to make a living for his family in a dystopian, divided America. A deadly game show called The Running Man might be his only golden ticket.
Edgar Wright versus AI, deepfakes, reality TV, and more. When Stephen King first wrote The Running Man in 1972 (published a decade later), he reimagined the year 2025 as an era of burgeoning inflation, manipulative media narratives, and reality TV that makes us salivate for sadistic punishments on contestants. We don't need Mr. King or any time-traveler to tell us how we're all set to run towards the bleak future from King's pages. Maybe our reality shows aren't hunting down contestants and slaying them for the camera (yet), but given the rise of "challenge"- driven content creators like Mr. Beast and cynically grim streaming hits like Netflix's Squid Game, a Running Man-style livestreamed future isn't far off. Even beyond the titular deathmatch, The Running Man updates its vintage source material with very real-world worries, particularly the misuse of deepfakes and AI-engineered news capable of hypnotizing the masses in doing the ruling class's bidding. In this case, this rapid-footed blockbuster holds media moguls in the same light as government bureaucrats. But in handling one man's run for survival within a larger political backdrop, Edgar Wright might have bargained more than he asked for (and that, too, with just one year to turn out this big-budget spectacle for Paramount Studios).
The result might be familiar dystopian fiction, but that doesn't take away the fun. Starting as one blue-collar man trapped in a deadly game show and then turning into one blue-collar man's fight against the system, The Running Man might lack the technical finesse and visual comedy of Wright's past hits like Baby Driver and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. With Antifa-like anarchists, surveillance tech-resisting citizens, and Michael Cera's pamphlet-printing journalist in the mix, this might also be Wright's most political movie to date. Sure, the politics might be surface-level like many a Hollywood satire on Trump-era America, but it's glorious fun to see Wright helm a good, old-fashioned actioner that has enough cheeky satire to go along with its balls-to-the-wall action. More than the original Running Man, this update is more like Robocop (which, interestingly, was released in the same year as Arnie's 1987 actioner).
A neurotically hot-heated Glen Powell and a supporting cast of oddballs. Glen Powell is no stranger to the world of legacy sequels and remakes, having become a household name with Top Gun: Maverick and Twisters. While Wright might not be working with a quintessentially '80s hit machine like Arnold Schwarzenegger over here, he still seems to have cryogenically defrosted a charming action hero from that era with Powell. The Texan star flashes his trademark smile every now and then when he's not aggressively recording tapes to update his status for the studios and audiences lusting for his death. The dialogues are action genre camp, but then again, Powell isn't the subtle, self-introspective kind of broken hero either. The rest of the cast is also smoothly assembled, with Josh Brolin as a sleazy TV exec, Colman Domingo as a flashily glorious gameshow host, and Michael Cera allowed to be nerdy and eccentric (basically himself).
The Running Man might not be the Edgar Wright blockbuster his cultish fans might be expecting, but it strides well enough. It's interesting to note that the last of many Stephen King adaptations we got this year was The Long Walk, a far more subtle and grounded look at a divided, television-controlled America. But while The Long Walk excelled in building camaraderie among juvenile "walkers" in a Hunger Games setup, The Running Man is the polar opposite, with one "runner" going through the seven circles of hell in a country that dumps its civilians, more so when Ben Richards is literally seeking shelter in the sewers. The flashiness, the tonal chaos, and the far-too-obvious political commentary could have birthed a formulaic Blade Runner rip-off. Wright might not even be fired up on all engines, but with Glen Powell in his Tom Cruise-trained running-and-smiling routine, The Running Man becomes far too bearable and crowd-pleasingly enjoyable.
Might be messier than your average Edgar Wright film, but The Running Man still works as a crowd-pleasing retro-futurist satire.
