The Running Man (15) Film Review
Dir: Edgar Wright, 2025, UK/US, 133 mins
Cast: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo
Review by Carol Allen
An earlier film of The Running Man, loosely based on Stephen King’s story was made in 1987 starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar but for his version Wright has stuck closely to King’s original book. He’s a fan of the writer and they are now friends, so of course he has. And while the result has plenty of action, it’s also strong on character.
The title refers to a brutal tv game show in near future America (2025 in King’s original story) which is broadcast on the government-controlled TV network. Contestants are on the run, being hunted by professional killers. If they survive for 30 days, the prize is a billion dollars. But the dice are loaded against them. Meanwhile every move is being broadcast to a bloodthirsty public and a studio audience howling like werewolves, encouraged by a glitzy game show host (Colman Domingo). It all makes Traitors seem like a jolly gathering of good friends.
Our hero is Ben (Glen Powell), a hardworking construction worker, who has been banned from working for protesting about unsafe work practices. And as the corporation, which is also the government, control everything – hey, maybe this isn’t that far from where real life 2025 America is heading after all? – he has nowhere to turn.
A devoted family man, he and his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson), who earns peanuts as a hostess in a club, desperately need money for medicine for their sick baby and the Running Man game is his only hope.
Powell is a very likeable and pleasant looking actor, who engages our sympathy from the start. Not so his main antagonist Josh Brolin as the ruthless producer of the show, who is crooked as a corkscrew and a bit of a Mephistophelian character, as he tries to tempt Ben into more and more excesses, as the going gets tougher and tougher. The game itself is fixed – the audience is being wound up through phony video footage of Ben bad mouthing them and everything they hold dear – and it looks like that billion dollar prize is an out of reach myth.
The film has echoes of course of the Hunger Games franchise with its theme of the underclass being exploited for mass entertainment and Brolin’s character in particular reminds us of previous satires on American tv such as Sydney Lumet’s Network or James L. Brooks Broadcast News. It is though primarily an action movie and Wright keeps the pace and the action going full throttle, while Powell keeps us rooting for Ben right to the end.
