THE STORY – A man joins a game show in which contestants, allowed to go anywhere in the world, are pursued by “hunters” hired to kill them.
THE CAST – Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Sean Hayes, Colman Domingo & Josh Brolin
THE TEAM – Edgar Wright (Director/Writer) & Michael Bacall (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 133 Minutes
If there was any time more fitting for an adaptation of “The Running Man,” this year certainly couldn’t have been more ideal. Whether it’s an overtly hope-core-fueled novella or bloody escapades involving toy monkeys and strenuous tests of endurance, the writing of Stephen King has been more present than ever on the big screen in 2025. It also helps that the country around us seems to be planting the seeds for the dystopian futures King has conceptualized in various ways throughout his career. This iteration of “The Running Man,” helmed by Edgar Wright, is far more of a faithful adaptation of King’s work, dissociating itself (to a degree) from the ’80s cheese that Paul Michael Glaser’s version so shamelessly embodies. There is something to be said about how Glaser’s vision of King’s work, although lacking accuracy, has created a guilty-pleasure legacy of its own that may, in fact, make it more memorable than this.
Wright, who hasn’t directed a narrative feature since “Last Night in Soho,” seeks to reclaim the good graces that showered his films throughout the 2010s, even teaming up with one of Hollywood’s biggest it-men, Glen Powell. Powell, who steps into the shoes Arnold Schwarzenegger left behind, plays Ben Richards, an easily provoked working man doing his best to take care of his family, which resides in the slums of Co-Op City. His predisposition to help his fellow man (and to blow a gasket) has always come at a cost, and now it’s preventing him from finding work. In dire need of help for his ailing daughter, Ben turns to the only way those in his situation aim to make a quick dollar: “The Running Man.” It’s the hottest game show in America, where those foolish enough to sign up run for their lives from elite hunters, and the world, for thirty days, has the chance to make a billion new dollars. The premise is ably set up through Wright’s vision of King’s novel and the gravitas of Powell as a performer. It’s easy to root for Ben as this sympathetic protagonist when Powell’s movie-star charm is more than present, although wrapped in the form of an enraged grunt with a fuse that’s always lit.
Yet Powell’s screen presence, while consistently delightful, isn’t enough to sustain what could be one of Wright’s more unbalanced outings in some time. With “Last Night in Soho,” Wright deviated from his typical stylized action in an attempt to take Dario Argento-influenced swings. Even if they didn’t all land, the effort was more than appreciated compared to how by-the-books “The Running Man” is, even for someone of Wright’s pedigree. Wright’s propensity to create elaborately stylized action sequences is somewhat diminished by the overly cut-to-pieces nature of the action sequences themselves. There are moments in “The Running Man” that, as an action film, do satisfy audiences, such as the Boston set piece, where Ben navigates a seedy hotel as hunters descend upon his location. Powell sells every second of Ben’s stress and frustration, slowly building confidence as the situations around him begin to heat up. Others throughout the film join his side, lending to humorous interactions, mainly Michael Cera’s Elton Parrakis, who lures military forces into his mansion of death traps to fulfill his revolutionary dreams. Beyond that, it feels as if Wright uses these characters more as fixtures in mindless plotting, slowly pushing Ben from one locale to another and so on.
The pacing is scattershot, which, from an editing standpoint, is bizarre considering how Wright has made films that live or die by their momentum. This also extends to the tone of the film, which fails to maintain a sense of being a heavy drama anchored by what Powell brings to his performance, juxtaposed with Wright’s comedic sensibilities, which stand out more here than in any of his other films. Wright’s lack of panache this time around also doesn’t alleviate the purely aesthetic fixations he has with King’s novel, which translate to a surface-level reading of what’s at the heart of the story. The way Michael Bacall and Wright’s screenplay tackles social commentary lacks nuance, opting only for the occasional statement hammered visually through Verhoeven-esque satire, while never managing to be as rousing as Richards’s defiance toward the establishment would lead one to believe. It only makes moments like Ben’s interactions with Emilia Jones’s out-of-touch Amelia Williams a more grating experience, with characters endlessly discussing the perception of their fellow humans.
Even with an ending that deviates from the novel’s original conclusion, as well as the 1987 film, it takes away any sting Wright wishes to leave with the audience. It’s a shame, because there is plenty that works within “The Running Man,” a film that, on paper, should have worked, especially when it has all the right parts to make the whole thing click. Many will try to pin this on the shoulders of its star, who, frankly, is doing everything right. At the heart of it, perhaps Wright just wasn’t the right fit for this story, as many of us had hoped he would be. That being said, what he’s able to get out of Colman Domingo as “The Running Man” host Bobby T is worth the price of a ticket alone. If anything, like most films, it could’ve used more of Domingo.
