Back in 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger was on the cusp of his A-list status and The Running Man, but more so Predator the same year, edged him ever closer to box office domination. Based on Stephen King’s novel under the alias Richard Bachman it saw a man join a televised lethal game show where players have to evade hunters hired to kill them. Except here it was peak fitness man mountain Arnie so just who would survive was inevitable. It’s now been remade by writer-director Edgar Wright but with an enviably larger budget.
The title role Ben Richards now played by Glen Powell, far more of an everyman, but not without anger issues that’s seen him fired from previous jobs and has now been fired once more, that now finds him trying to get it back whilst he babysits whilst his wife works two jobs to make ends meet in the nihilistic future where this is set. It’s a future where all game shows put contestants through physical hell and humiliation but the doyen of all these shows is The Running Man with a truly massive monetary prize should you manage to stay alive til the end – and of course no one ever does but that never stops anyone from entering. Against his wife’s wishes Ben signs up goes through a series of tests and qualifies along with two others who, like Brooklyn Beckham reading a book, are unlikely to get to the end. With a deliriously showboating TV host (a hugely enjoyable Colman Domingo) the three are catapulted into the city goaded by a baying studio audience in a bid to last 30 days. Let the games commence.
Pursued by the hunters led by a masked McCone (Lee Pace) we follow Richards through a series of action set pieces the best of which is an inventively booby trapped house owned by Michael Cera. He’s one of several people that Powell meets along the way that includes Wililam H Macy and Emilia Jones. It’s no surprise as to whether Powell will make it to the end.
So as a director Edgar Wright has always had a distinctive visual style with a creative use of edit wipes used to such great effect in his cornetto trilogy, striking on screens graphics (Scott Pilgrim vs the World), inventive single takes (that opening shot of Baby Driver) and cleverly composed shots (Last Night in Soho) but there’s very little of that here. By far his most expensive film its an action orientated film that’s proficiently shot but there’s little that really compares with the likes of Gareth Evans’ Raid films or Chad Stahelksi’s John Wick franchise. There’s also a kind of missed opportunity with its masked villain McCone finally revealing his face which would have been ideally suited to have been a major star or a forgotten silver screen icon.
Where it does score is the scripts clever sub-text that takes a swing at AI and especially media manipulation along with digs at Kardashian-a-like reality shows. Glen Powell handles it all with aplomb and Josh Brolin much like Colman Domingo, embraces his morality free TV svengali with aplomb. But filmmakers have often said that a small budget demands creativity and perhaps because there is such a big budget for this that it seems less experimental and creative than that which we’ve seen before from Wright that makes this a little generic.
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Here’s The Running Man trailer….
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