Stephen King wrote his novel The Running Man in 1972, and it was published a decade later under his pseudonym Richard Bachmann. At the time that name was reserved for work King felt was motivated by a particularly angry anxiety (see also The Long Walk and Rage). In 1987, it was adapted into a pretty cartoonish (and cartoonishly entertaining) film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, one that quite loosely appropriated the novel’s premise but reshaped it into an ’80s action vehicle for its newly minted star. Now, almost 50 years after King wrote his book — an avowedly anti-capitalist media satire/screed — in a week during a snowstorm, we have a new The Running Man movie from beloved cult director Edgar Wright.
Though King’s book takes place in 2025, we don’t see what the date is in Wright’s particular future dystopia. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is desperate for money to buy medicine for his sick daughter. Blacklisted from work in his field (some undisclosed manufacturing) for allegedly being a font of unrepressed rage, and disgusted by his wife’s return to dancing at the titty bar to make ends meet, he decides he’s only got one option: auditioning for the Network’s game shows to score some quick cash. That hot temper of his gets him fast-tracked for the top attraction: The Running Man. If Richards can survive for 30 days with literally every citizen in the country tasked with killing him, he’ll win a billion dollars.
The cash in this future has Arnold on it, by the way. And by comparison to the Austrian Oak’s version, Wright’s is at least narratively quite faithful to the novel. Gone are the ’87 installment’s colorful comic book-esque stalkers played by the likes of Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Here there’s just a Network-financed commando group called The Hunters, lead by Evan McCone (a mostly masked Lee Pace). Richard Dawson’s mercurial host in the OG, meanwhile, has been replaced by Colman Domingo as Bobby T, and now the real villain is Network chief Dan Killian (Josh Brolin). And yet tonally, this Running Man is absolutely all over the map. Its totally ethically compromised dystopia is littered with Verhoeven-ish news reports and depictions of a society completely degraded by capitalism, but colored with far less grit than it requires to pull this off. When our beleaguered hero disguises himself as a blind priest, it feels like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, played for a goof. Sure, this plot point might be lifted right out of the source material, but the book’s complete and total ruthlessness somehow makes it work, which isn’t the case here.
Wright’s obvious skills as a craftsman of action and an editor for momentum kind of work against him as well. He hurtles through plot, leaving supporting characters stranded and emotional arcs stunted. When a fellow dissident (Michael Cera) has to make a crucial choice between aiding Richards and saving his own family, the decision barely tracks because we only found out about it 45 seconds ago, and now Wright is onto one of his patented action sequences built out of elaborate camera moves, Tex Avery-ish stunts, and meticulous editing to the beat of some deep cut piece of pop music. The execution isn’t incompetent by any margin, but everything feels undeniably sanded down. For every wince-worthy bit of dystopian unpleasantness, there’s a cheeky gag or tossed off bit of rather tame violence. Wright’s film lacks the grit and anger and hopelessness that might have sold the material in one direction, but at the same time it’s not nearly exciting enough to make up for that loss or sell it in any other direction. Ultimately, The Running Man is a 130-minute pulled punch.
DIRECTOR: Edgar Wright; CAST: Glen Powell, Katy O’Brian, Josh Bolin, Jayme Lawson, Lee Pace; DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures; IN THEATERS: November 14; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 13 min.
Comments are closed.