The Running Man Dir: Edgar Wright (13th Floor Film Review)
I was 14 years old when I read Stephen King’s The Running Man and it blew my teenage mind.
Starring: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Sean Hayes, Katy O’Brian with Colman Domingo and Josh Brolin
A rage fuelled, middle finger to uncaring authoritarians of a distant dystopian future (the book is set in 2025), with an underdog, scrawny hero? This book got me. Imagine my excitement when a year later I spotted a billboard for the film adaptation. The fact it had Schwarzenegger’s face on it should have been my first warning. It was an adaptation in the loosest of terms and director Paul Glaser (Starsky of Starsky & Hutch fame) kept the title and threw out everything else.
So it’s been a long wait for director Edgar Wright’s vision of the novella, which he also read when he was 14. Little wonder that King and Arnie have given this a hearty stamp of approval – it delivers, hard. It lands many key story moments from the book and captures the books antiestablishment rage. A couple of moments in the third act even felt like they were there exclusively for readers of the book but to explain further is to stumble into spoiler territory.
What’s perhaps lost is the gritty feel but if your personal preference is movies that are light hearted and lean more into humour at the cost of feeling grounded, then you won’t mind at all. There are many moments that feel cartoonish here and while that got some laughs from the audience, it sacrifices weight and undercuts the stakes.
It’s a very heavy set up and I would’ve preferred that Wright had gone with a darker tone, along the lines of his incredible Last Night In Soho, rather than the playful Baby Driver, but that’s personal taste – not a criticism.
You still get a punk-energy infused good time at the cinema, with pacing befitting that title and a ride that has you feeling like you’re participating in the show yourself. It’s mines the ‘What Would You Do’ aspect well by providing a couple of other runners to follow and clever world building keeps the rules of the game tight.
Glen Powell as the constantly furious Ben Richards shines here, embodying the everyman action star, instantly believable as an out-of-his-depth desperate Dad. And when I say he shines, I also mean literally in a scene where he’s just out of the shower in wrapped in towel. I heard a sound from my wife sitting next to me in the cinema, that can only be described as something between a gasp and a squeal.
Coming this Christmas, the ‘Powell In A Towel’ plushie toy that every woman wants. Batteries not included.
Man of the match though has to be Josh Brolin who is everywhere this year and so much the better as he has a presence on screen that makes every moment he’s in memorable. As the vile head of “The Network”, he embodies everything that’s wrong with modern media and (if we’re revoltingly honest) everything that’s wrong with our viewing diets.
That serves as segue into the themes of the film. Scratch the surface and the subtext is right there (at one point a character is literally screaming it into the camera): Modern media is manipulating us to hate each other for profit.
Not a revelation to anyone and even though it’s dialled up to 11 in The Running Man its still a timely reminder that we’re all still figuring out this fragmented world of news, entertainment and government messaging. Thankfully Running Man is here to entertain us so there’s a clear bad guy who takes the place of the “they” that we all like to complain about.
My issues, if any, are very limited to story threads that never pay off (TV’s that watch the watcher, an ‘Americano’s’ reality TV show that apes the Kardashians and a couple of other moments that have me wondering if there’s something left on the cutting room floor). And there’s a noticeable lack of epic needle-drops (Wright always makes music such a big part of his films so the sense there was nothing memorable here was a minor let down). Interesting to note that both this and One Battle After Another include the Gil Scott-Heron track, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
Last little grumble – the endings. There’s too many of them and they felt very tacked on, to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the result of studio interference or audience test screening whiplash.
Thankfully, it’s doesn’t do anything to diminish all the films good work to that point. Wright has shown he can direct the hell out of an action film while still injecting his unique brand of humour – grenades, bazookas, blowing up bridges, boys with flame throwers and burning rats. Have a ball joining the audience of The Running Man and then judge yourself later for enjoying the spectacle, you despicable blood thirsty viewer, you.
Matthew Rice
The Running Man is in cinemas now. Click here for tickets and showtimes.
