Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver director Edgar Wright is back in the director’s chair four years on from his last movie, Last Night in Soho, but this time with a Stephen King adaptation.
Based on the 1982 novel of the same name, The Running Man was adapted into a 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie set in – would you believe it – 2017.
But now, the acclaimed English filmmaker aims to adapt much more closely to the source material rather than follow a straight remake route.
Set in a dystopian near-future with an analogue aesthetic, Glen Powell’s Ben Richards is a struggling working-class family man who cannot afford basic medicine for his sick daughter.
Stuck for options, he enters a Squid Game/Hunger Games-style TV game show called The Running Man, in which contestants must survive 30 days while being hunted down by professional assassins in a race to win $1 billion (with Arnie’s cameo face on). The only problem is that no one has ever left the challenge alive, with 29 days being the top score to date.
Powell’s furious lead (complete with prosthetic forehead vein about to pop), reluctantly enters the gameshow hosted by Colman Domingo’s hilarious and charismatic Bobby T, in one of the film’s best performances. As he enters the challenge, Powell proves himself to be a worthy new Hollywood action star, although his performance and voice are more reminiscent of Chris Evans than his Top Gun mentor, Tom Cruise. The set pieces are entertaining enough with Wright’s signature whizzy direction, if not somewhat unbelievable for someone attempting to survive in such a life-and-death situation. Also look out for Aled Jones’ daughter Emilia Jones playing a hostage towards the film’s end, in her biggest Hollywood role to date.
Despite all the 80s-inspired tongue-in-cheekness of it all, The Running Man can’t make up its mind tonally. The film struggles to decide whether it is cartoonish or serious, partly due to the weightiness of its message. Throughout the challenge, Josh Brolin’s charming but lethal show producer, Dan Killian, is high up at “the Network,” which seems to also run the country. An on-the-nose jab at the viral-centric Trump 2.0 administration and its tech billionaire fawning, it seems. Meanwhile, AI is used to alter what players do and say in the game for the sake of ratings, with assassins being held back or killed off to allow a fan favourite to live a few more days. Such warnings of truth being sidelined for profit and control are nothing new, but are certainly more relevant than ever in 2025. Although dragging at 2 hours and ending on a bit of a whimper makes us think that a Black Mirror episode could have done better in that regard. Wright is an incredibly talented writer-director and at his best with his own material, whereas by the end of this adaptation, we were left somewhat disappointed.
The Running Man is out now in UK cinemas.