In 1982, famed horror/sci-fi/fantasy novelist Stephen King published a book called “The Running Man” under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. His story imagined America in the year 2025: an authoritarian country, biased media outlets, extreme class disparity, propaganda, AI… weird how far off King was from what 2025 in America actually looks like… The novel was first adapted (loosely, from what I understand) in 1987 into a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then, in 2017, director Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver) tweeted that if he could remake any movie, it would be The Running Man. Now in 2025, the year the original story is set, Wright has gotten his wish. His vision was to stay closer to the novel than the Schwarzenegger movie. The result is a movie that’s decent enough, but doesn’t leave a lasting impression. Is the action the problem? There was some good tension in the beginning but it runs out of steam quicker than it should. And for someone as inventive and fun when it comes to action sequences as Edgar Wright, the set pieces in The Running Man really didn’t have much personality. But, honestly, the biggest limitation of the film is the story. King’s novel has aged too well. Not only have we had plenty of similar dystopian tales throughout the years that have been massively popular like The Hunger Games, Black Mirror, and Squid Game, but we’re also basically living in the fictional world he invented. There’s no shock value anymore. It’s no longer sci-fi or fantasy, it’s all too real. And the movie doesn’t have any insightful commentary on the current moment we find ourselves in and how this fantasy reflects that. It’s a story that should feel timelier than ever, but Wright’s Running Man struggles to make a dystopia that’s already arrived feel urgent.

The movie follows Ben Richards (Glen Powell), a man living in Slumside who can’t keep a job due to insubordination, often standing up for working conditions for his fellow employees. When his two-year-old daughter falls ill, Ben and his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson) need money for medication. Ben decides his only choice is to apply to be on a game show at the Network, a giant corporation that essentially rules the country. The Network’s Free-Vee platform airs a mix of violent game shows and overly-obvious Kardashians parallels, all designed as propaganda to entertain the masses and distract them from a system ruthlessly rigged against them. The #1 show on the Network is “The Running Man”, a competition that offers $1 billion to any contestant who can survive a 30-day countrywide manhunt, being pursued by a kill team known as the Hunters, led by the masked McCone (Lee Pace). No one has ever won the show and losing means death. Ben’s hotheadness and physical toughness during testing get the attention of Network head Dan Killian (Josh Brolin). Killian tells Ben he thinks he has what it takes to win. Not that Killian wants to crown a winner, he just wants good television. The show paints its contestants to the public as villains and criminals to further encourage them to participate through the “Record and Report” program, in which anyone who sights a contestant can become an informant. If the cash prizes weren’t incentive enough. Along the way, Ben receives help from citizens leading their own resistance efforts to undermine the Network and expose its corruption. His defiant attitude also makes him a kind of folk hero, with growing numbers of watchers rooting for him instead of the hunters the longer his run continues. So does Ben Richards become the first winner of “The Running Man”? Does he survive? Does surviving even mean winning anymore? Or has his cause become bigger than that? Does the “Richards lives” moment have what it takes to topple the Network once and for all? I’m choosing not to spoil that here.

Technically this story came first, but throughout the film I kept thinking about The Hunger Games. A televised event where people are killed for sport and spectacle, put on by the government as a means to control the population, and one contestant comes in and disrupts everything through sheer defiance and unwillingness to be another pawn in the game. Glen Powell might as well be playing Katniss Everdeen. For modern audiences in a world where stories like The Hunger Games and other dystopias have achieved such popularity, The Running Man feels like old news. We’ve been there, done that. A few times now. And is it really dystopian if it’s not that far off from our current experience? A totalitarian media state. You can’t believe anything you see or hear in the news or online. No one cares about the truth, they just care about the narrative they’re trying to spin. Propaganda to incite the masses. AI and deepfakes meant to muddy the waters even further. Even in watching this movie, we can’t trust what we’re seeing half the time with the inclusion of dream sequences and imagined encounters. The movie tries and fails to satirize America. But America can’t be satirized right now. It’s become such a joke unto itself that the reality is beyond anything we could invent. The Running Man doesn’t find anything new to say about it. There are no takeaways other than the obvious good must defeat evil and the film strays from the book’s far more nihilistic ending, maybe the only possible outcome that makes logical sense in a world like this. The themes are strikingly relevant today, but the message of the movie feels behind the times.

Many people said The Running Man would be the ultimate movie star test for Glen Powell. Can he carry a movie on his own? I would say yes, with a caveat. I know I’m biased because I do love him, but I think Glen is great in the movie. He looks amazing, he’s good at the action, he’s good at the emotion, he’s always been good at the charm. Edgar Wright pointed out on the Smartless podcast that Glen is in every scene of the movie. We’re always with him, in his point of view, we never cut away. It’s meant to mirror the concept of the gameshow. Ben Richards always has eyes on him. And Glen definitely holds the screen. In that sense, he’s a movie star. However, I do think he’s slightly miscast in this movie. Killian tells Ben he’ll be great for the show because he’s “the angriest man ever to audition”. And that’s just not something we get from Glen. He’s almost too charming to be that angry. You don’t really buy it from him. I don’t necessarily fault him for that. He has plenty of other skills and has major movie star potential in other roles better suited for him. And Glen has a bunch of projects lined up where he’ll hopefully get to show that off. With The Running Man, he was trying to be a Tom Cruise type when he’s really more of a Matthew McConaughey. Colman Domingo as Bobby T., the popular host of “The Running Man”, is the perfect showman. He’s over-the-top in exactly the right amount. Michael Cera is once again fantastic playing funny and weird but also sincere. And Josh Brolin is appropriately slimy as Dan Killian, really working his blinding veneers. But there are also plenty of secondary characters who don’t get much development. Emilia Jones (fresh off Task), William H. Macy, Katy O’Brian, Martin Herlihy, Lee Pace, Jayme Lawson, all appear in brief moments that don’t reflect their capabilities as actors or allow them the chance to shine. 

Action movies like this are often meant to be fun escapism. And The Running Man is that at times. But it also gets too close to the line of reality, reminding us of the ills in our own world we’re going to the movies to escape. Not that movies shouldn’t be made about those very real and important topics, but The Running Man can’t decide if it wants to criticize, parody, ignore, or confront those issues. And that’s where it runs into trouble. Wright’s Running Man tries to reimagine a story that has already come true, but in doing so, it feels less ahead of its time and more like it’s catching up, a mirror held up to a world that no longer needs the warning. Reality has already outpaced imagination and it’s hard to satirize a world that’s already living its own dystopia. I feel like I made the movie sound really bad in this review. It’s not. It’s totally fine. But neither the action nor the commentary is exciting enough for me to urge anyone to go see it.

2025 Count: 77 movies, 47 seasons of television, 4 specials