Director Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver, Last Night in Soho) helms a reboot of the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger classic, which itself was based on a story by Stephen King. I say reboot rather than a remake as Wright’s version has very little in common with the original other than the title and the name of the main character. Forget everything you know about the 1987 original as it’s all changed for a modern audience.
Set in the U.S. in the near-future where TV is controlled by the government, the most popular show is The Running Man. The show sees contestants, known as Runners, trying to survive for 30 days whilst being hunted by professional assassins and the general public, who can turn them in for a reward.
Desperate for big money to save his sick daughter, working-class Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is convinced by the shows director (Josh Brolin) to enter the show.
What follows is a pretty thin story connected by a series of action set pieces as Richards, and two other contestants, play hide and seek with both the public and the hired assassins.
As it’s now 2025 and not 1987, Richards is no longer the mean killer that Arnie was but instead he’s an angry man with a heart who’s only forced to turn to violence to protect his family. Arnie would never have warned people that there was a gas leak that might explode or that he had a grenade. Kill and ask questions later was his philosophy.
Most of the action works well, a hold up in a YMCA and an encounter with government hating recluse (Michael Cera) being a couple of the standouts. Sadly, The Running Man is let down by a plot that feels like it’s been made in order to offend no one.
Slightly too long (over 2 hours whereas the original came in at just over 90 minutes), Wright’s film could have done with some trimming, especially at the end. But other than that, The Running Man is an enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable, piece of entertainment that’s thankfully not as bad as Total Recall (2012), the last effort at remaking a Schwarzenegger classic.
