The Running Man
by George Wolf
The mantra of this year’s The Running Man?
“When the stakes goes up, the shit goes down!”
And since 1987, which way have the original film’s stakes of weaponized disinformation, competitive cruelty and strategic class warfare been trending?
So enter director/co-writer Edgar Wright and star Glen Powell to get down to some dirty business in a pretty familiar dystopian future.
Powell is our new Ben Richards, who winds up on the The Running Man game show trying to win enough “new dollars” to pay for the care of his sick daughter and maybe even spring her and his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson) out of the Co-Op City slums.
Producer Killian (Josh Brolin) likes the feisty cut of Ben’s jib, and is only too happy to start manipulating the game so Richards can become an engaging “final dude” for the cheering, bloodlusty hoards.
And this time, those common folk are joining the star “hunters” while the runners rely on underground friends and old, untraceable tech in trying to stay alive for 30 days.
In the Stephen King library, this material has always seemed like a more overt, in-your-face take on the themes he explored in The Long Walk. And while Wright avoids the high cheese factor of Arnold’s Running Man film, he keeps the lighter, glitzy tone that seems right for a game show aesthetic. Wright leans less on the trademark swipe cuts and wink-wink edits this time, but provides plenty of color splashes and engaging action set pieces to keep those eyeballs entertained.
Powell brings more than enough rogue-ish charm to make Ben a winning hero/anti-hero, Brolin is a perfect show biz menace and Colman Domingo is gloriously over-the-top as show host Bobby T. Both Michael Cera and CODA‘s Emilia Jones drive thru for some fun cameos, and the entire ensemble has no trouble keeping Wright’s vibe cooking.
Don’t expect subtlety. The moral lessons are clearly stated and the last act pulls in some explanatory (but nicely organic) speechifying before the crowd-pleasing finale. But hey, it’s telling us that those things we were worrying about almost 40 years ago have only gotten worse.
We already knew that. Might as well have some fun running with that fact for two hours.
