Wright’s stylized remake limps to the finish line
The fifth and final Stephen King adaptation of 2025 is about to hit theaters. After The Monkey in April, The Life of Chuck in June, The Long Walk in September, and the HBO series IT: Welcome to Derry, the list comes to an explosive close with a new adaptation of King’s 1982 thriller The Running Man (originally published under King’s pseudonym, Richard Bachman). The 1987 version of The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger has become a cult classic, commended for its critical depiction of a dystopian American pop culture-obsessed society, as well as for its campy villains and one-liners. The new film is co-written and directed by Edgar Wright (Baby Driver; Hot Fuzz), and sticks much closer to King’s source material than the 1987 film. The new film has many parts that work, and many parts that don’t. The Running Man’s ultimate success lies in some slick action and standout performances, but an indecipherable tone and confounding editing keep the film from achieving blockbuster greatness.
In The Running Man book, as in the new movie, a blue-collar worker, Ben Richards (Glen Powell), jumps from job to job in order to earn enough money to support his wife, Sheila (Jayme Lawson), and buy proper medicine for their sick infant child. Ben’s short temper consistently gets him fired, and his last resort is to sign up for the popular reality series, The Running Man, which is produced by a “big brother” type media conglomerate simply referred to as “The Network” and broadcast on their streaming platform, “Free-Vee.” The dystopian society of The Running Man, which King originally published in 1982 before reality TV and streaming services were a plausible reality, is clearly divided between the have and the have-nots, and “The Network” wields an authoritarian regime’s level of political, judicial, and economical control over every facet of American society. Yes, very prescient. On The Running Man, Richards and two other contestants, Laughlin (Katy O’Brian) and Timothy Jansky (Martin Herlihy) must survive for 30 days while an elite squad of five hunters track him down with help from the public (who are financially incentivized to report sightings). Richards’ bonuses accrue for every day and week he survives, and every hunter he kills, with the ultimate prize being one billion dollars.
The rules of the Running Man contest are clearly laid out, and Wright does a good job crafting the stakes and overwhelming (cheating) power of “The Network” while overseeing the contest. Powell is a great stand-in for the typical King protagonist, a handsome blue-collar, wise-cracking tough guy with a stubborn “my way or the highway” attitude. Powell takes the entirety of the first act to settle in, however, after spending the first handful of scenes stuck in a “look how serious I am” facial squint with an exaggerated gait. Once the film brings in more supporting characters for Powell to play off, especially “The Network” owner Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), the show’s emcee Bobby Thompson (Colman Domingo), and a few outside resistance fighters who offer to help Richards, including Bradley (Daniel Ezra) and Elton (Michael Cera), Powell is empowered to show off a wider range of emotions. And Powell once again proves he’s well fitted for action, and The Running Man has a lot of inventive action scenes.
The Running Man suffers most when it doesn’t trust the audience. It’s made perfectly clear that everything Richards and other Running Man contestants do is being filmed (when they’re out in public) via flying camera orbs. So, it’s frustrating that Wright continuously chooses to frame some of the best action scenes in a “camera footage” style to resemble what’s being shown to the Free-Vee audience: red-line framed, filtered, with a few digital read-outs. Unfortunately, this effect significantly disrupts the scenes’ propulsive energy and literally softens the action. We know that everything is being filmed and shown to the Free-Vee audience, so the invasive inserts only detract from our viewing experience. Annoyingly, the film’s trailers have the same amazing action footage without the red borders – and they look much better. In other instances, specifically in a few montages, which are right in Wright’s wheelhouse, the context and transitions are sloppy, if not borderline incoherent. Like a comic book, one scene will cut via a spray paint effect across the screen, and in another we’ll just jump to a different location without a sense of how or when Richards got there. When The Running Man is hard to follow, the humor and drama also begin to overlap, resulting in a movie that can’t decide if it wants to be stylish and serious, or stylish and humorous. I think Wright wants the former, but we often get the latter.
The Running Man is so steeped in politicized American imagery and themes that even Wright’s keen British satirical sensibilities may have proven to be an imperfect fit to helm this project. Clear allusions to gun-toting makeshift militias, the nuclear American family, and a Kardashian-esque reality show are too on the nose. Wright’s usual mixture of exaggeration and sincerity, blended perfectly within his “Cornetto Trilogy,” is sorely lacking from The Running Man. On the strength of a charming cast and some exciting action, The Running Man has just enough juice to cross the finish line, but it unfortunately limps and stumbles along the way.
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The Running Man opens in theaters on Friday, Nov. 14th.
