The Running Man review: Edgar Wright and Glen Powell deliver a wild but weak remake
In Edgar Wright’s adaptation of Stephen King’s *The Running Man*, the filmmaker takes a bold yet controversial approach by infusing comedy into a narrative that originally critiques a dystopian society plagued by corruption and exploitation. King’s novel presents a harrowing tale of protagonist Ben Richards, who is forced into a deadly game show run by a corrupt media conglomerate, where the poor and desperate become entertainment fodder for a bloodthirsty audience. However, Wright’s vision transforms this intense thriller into a comedic spectacle, featuring the charming Glen Powell as a blue-collar worker turned reluctant contestant. While Wright’s previous films, such as *Shaun of the Dead* and *Hot Fuzz*, successfully blended genres, his comedic take on *The Running Man* raises questions about whether humor can coexist with the dark themes of King’s narrative.
The film remains closer to King’s original plot than the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger adaptation, yet it struggles to balance its comedic elements with the serious undertones of its source material. Wright’s version features Powell’s character navigating a gauntlet of absurd challenges while being pursued by a roster of eccentric hunters, all while the stakes of survival are played for laughs. Critics argue that this approach undermines the gravity of the story, as the violence becomes cartoonish rather than impactful. The film’s attempt at satire is further diluted by its reliance on slapstick humor and product placements, which detract from the political commentary that could have emerged from its critique of media sensationalism and economic disparity.
Despite its shortcomings, *The Running Man* does shine in its casting, particularly with standout performances from actors like Josh Brolin and Colman Domingo, who embody the film’s antagonistic forces with flair. However, the film’s failure to address systemic issues such as race in the context of its dystopian setting leaves a significant gap in its narrative. Ultimately, Wright’s adaptation presents a visually engaging but thematically dissonant experience, where the pursuit of entertainment overshadows the critical commentary that could have made it a more profound exploration of American society. As audiences prepare to see *The Running Man* in theaters on November 14, they may find themselves grappling with the question of whether a comedic lens can truly capture the essence of a story rooted in desperation and survival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT55AqvTOLk
Why make
The Running Man
a comedy? Stephen King’s novel was a furious political thrill ride about a man out of options, forced to fight for his life (and family) against a corrupt government, exploitative media, and cruel capitalist system that turned impoverished people into prey for a ravenous TV show that makes their murders entertainment. Yet when Edgar Wright, who’s previously blended horror and comedy with
Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz,
and
The World’s End
, read this book, he apparently thought what was missing from
The Running Man
was slapstick and an endless supply of jokes, peppered by peculiar product placement.
That’s not to say a dystopian movie can’t be a successful comedy. Look to
Zombieland,
Sorry to Bother You
, The Lobster
, or
Tank Girl
(but not
Electric State
). Yet the very premise of
The Running Man
novel, from which this movie pulls heavily, is so dark and furious that casting a hunky movie star, Glen Powell, to play silly and sexy while also being politically challenging is absurd. (Perhaps this is why the Schwarzenegger adaptation veered far from the book’s plot for a more audacious, even cartoony, vision of dramatic dystopia.) The critiques Wright’s film half-heartedly makes can’t land, as the comedy constantly undercuts the viciousness of this particular dystopia. The result is a flashy film that wants to have it both ways in terms of violence and complacency.
The Running Man
is truer to King’s book than the Schwarzenegger version.
Katy O’Brian, Glen Powell, and Martin Herlihy play runners in “The Running Man.”
Credit: Paramount Pictures
Exuding an athletic but not hyper-muscular brand of masculinity, Glen Powell is a more grounded “running man,”
a stark contrast to the 1987 action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. That adaptation took only a sliver of King’s novel to spin an outrageous tale well suited to the pumped-up masculinity of its larger-than-life action star, who played a wrongfully convicted hero-cop surrounded by aggro, beefy, and eccentric hunters with names like Fireball, Dynamo, and Buzzsaw.
In Wright’s more faithful adaptation, Powell is more of an everyman. Far from some almost superhuman figure, his Ben Richards is a blue-collar worker who has been fired from one job after another for standing up for his fellow workers. Blacklisted for his “commie” sympathies (Ben is pro-union), he turns to The Network to provide for his wife, Sheila (Jayme Lawson), and their sick baby, Cathy.
Run by Dan Killian (Josh Brolin mimicking Dennis Quaid’s chin-forward mugging in
The Substance
), The Network is a game show channel that flings the desperate into an array of vicious games that promise embarrassment, injury, and death in exchange for cash prizes. Richards is hoping for a less deadly show (like
Speed the Wheel
), but is cast in
The Running Man.
To get back to his family, he’ll need to play by Killian’s twisted rules, surviving 30 days being tracked by paid “goons” (who’ve taken the place of police) and a celebrity hunter named Evan McCone (a masked Lee Pace). Making things even harder, fans of the show can report on his location and get paid for tips leading to his on-camera execution.
Fans of the book might well appreciate that Wright, who co-wrote
The Running Man
with his
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
collaborator Michael Bacall, stays pretty close to King’s plot points for much of the runtime. However, where Wright turns to comedy, he veers hard from King’s tone and thereby intentions, caving to audiences’ basest impulses for bloody, mindless cinematic spectacle.
SEE ALSO:
Bryan Lee O’Malley on ‘Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’ twist fans didn’t see coming
The Running Man
pulls its punches through slapstick.
Glen Powell, left, and Michael Cera star in “The Running Man.”
Credit: Paramount Pictures
Let’s start with the violence. There’s plenty of it, from gunshot wounds to booby traps and explosions. Yet Wright is careful about
who
will get hurt onscreen. Nameless “runners” from the titular TV show will be served up as comedic canon fodder in a goofy montage to explain the show’s premise and inescapability. A barrage of goons will be fed into the violence spectacle grinder. But when it comes to characters the audience might be invested in — be they heroes to love or villains to loathe — Wright holds back, with few exceptions.
Pivotal plot points involving major character deaths don’t hit hard because Wright either cuts away from the killing blow or cops out on the carnage that such a violent end could have (especially in a movie where life is cheap and gore is cheered). When it comes to good guy deaths, this sheepishness for onscreen violence might be explained as not wanting to sour the fun of this action-comedy by making us actually think about the real horrors of such violence. But why go easy on the movie’s big bads? Why pull those punches?
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In place of the kind of violence that would make
The Running Man
‘s R-rating feel truly fitting, Wright delivers a tamer provocation: cursing. There are a lot of four-letter words, which is perhaps supposed to play as funny, or macho, or defiant. But Richards and others repeatedly calling those oppressive authority figures “shit eaters” just feels juvenile (especially when he’s literally just eaten shit in a sewer escape).
The Running Man
is afraid to confront American politics directly.
Colman Domingo plays a TV presenter with plenty of style in “The Running Man.”
Credit: Paramount Pictures
Most frustrating, however, is that Wright and Bacall use comedy to undercut any political earnestness or even dramatic tension in the film. For instance, Ben is running for his life from the hunters, but nudity is used to amuse. Powell not only strips down to a towel, then his birthday suit, but also pops into his messy escape a dangerous stunt deflated by a cheap joke. To quote Ben, “Why?!” Later in the film, an oddball ally, played by
Scott Pilgrim’s
leading man Michael Cera, delivers a passionate speech about police corruption only to
immediately
make a joke by cavalierly plugging a real-world energy drink brand. Why let the critique land when we can instead comfort a mainstream audience with a kooky visual gag?
Of course, there is a way to make a political statement while working in brand sponsorships. Consider how
Josie and the Pussycats
made such branding a villain within the plot of its film even as it bandied about a plethora of brand names, or how
Fight Club
only featured brand names during intense scenes of violence or terrorism. Wright’s nowhere near so daring, making soft punchlines of each product placement without a critique behind their appearance. Plus, it’s hard to take the political monologue about poverty Richards screams at a rich, white girl (Emilia Jones) he’s taken captive all that seriously when he’s flashing $20,000 veneers. As I said with
The Lost Bus
,
Hollywood leading men cannot play impoverished everymen with clearly costly smiles. Look at Leonardo DiCaprio in
Killers of the Flower Moon.
He gets it!
Yet the wildest choice Wright makes is how he carefully frames this dystopia of crippling economic inequality as a place devoid of race politics. Set in a world in which both Schwarzenegger’s political career and President Barack Obama are referenced,
The Running Man
carefully sets up a critique of economic inequality while dodging how systemic racial inequality ties in. These choices in screenwriting and casting could be an editorial unto themselves, but require a lot of spoilers. Essentially, Wright seems to dodge issues of race so as not to risk making his audience uncomfortable as they watch slaughter for fun. He presents an American dystopia where people are lining up to be hunted for spectacle so they can get a taste of what it means to even briefly have wealth, and yet they’ve overcome racism?
Perhaps it’s naive to expect a studio-made movie with a reported $100 million budget to have anything all that challenging to say about American society. Maybe it’s best we leave that to foreign filmmakers who’ve given us such hilarious, thrilling,
and
thought-provoking films as
Triangle of Sadness
,
Parasite,
and
Mickey 17
.
(Oh, wait. That last one
was
an American-studio produced movie — from this year even!)
Still,
The Running Man
isn’t all infuriating.
The best part of
The Running Man
is the character actors.
Daniel Ezra, left, and Angelo Giorgio Gray play brothers in “The Running Man.”
Credit: Paramount Pictures
Props to Brolin, who, as he has in
Weapons
and the Avengers movies, sinks his teeth into playing a real ruthless bastard. Pace, though criminally masked for much of the film, still exudes a titillating intensity through sheer physicality as the ruthless lead hunter. Colman Domingo is enthralling as the merciless host of
The Running Man
, delivering killer fashion sense and a Caesar Flickerman-level of showmanship for government propaganda. William H. Macy brings a suitable
Mystery Men
-like
weariness as a caring black-market dealer. Sandra Dickinson channels
IT
as a deranged fan of
The Running Man
TV show. Michael Cera brings a grounded sincerity as a zine-making rebel before leaning into Wright’s indulgences for a
Home Alone
-like zaniness. Angelo Giorgio Gray and Daniel Ezra bring heart as a pair of brothers short-changed by a problematic script. And Katy O’Brian, who keeps proving a highlight in a barrage of big movies that don’t know what to do with her — see
Twisters
,
Christy
,
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
,
and
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning
, all movies in which O’Brian has brief but sensational appearances — is terrific fun.
In
The Running Man,
she’s another runner, one who is committed to queer debauchery, not hiding from the cameras but being out, loud, and defiant at strip clubs and casinos. This woman is a dynamo with explosive screen presence. For more of her, check out
Love Lies Bleeding
and
Queens of the Dead
.
And join me in manifesting a big-budget movie that understands she should be the damn lead.
Katy O’Brian stars in “The Running Man.”
Credit: Paramount Pictures
Anyhow,
The Running Man
is a bizarre movie. Through a collection of wild game shows and a
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
parody called
The Americanos,
Wright offers a critique of how reality TV might mollify the masses by turning class conflict into easy-to-digest entertainment. But then he offers a fictionalized form of this same popcorn-munching fuel by undermining
The Running Man
‘s inherent politics by feeding into audience’s bloodlust and avoiding such taboo topics as race.
Perhaps Wright was less interested in adapting King’s novel than having his own run at the concept that made the Schwarzenegger version such a wild ride. Maybe this English filmmaker never intended to say anything all that profound about American society. But playing so close to King’s concept while embracing the cliches of American action movies creates a dissonance that’s not just unsatisfying, it’s infuriating. In the end,
The Running Man
is a sloppy collage of violence, action, and cheap jokes that is far more style than substance.
The Running Man
opens in theaters on Nov. 14.
