Reviews For The Easily Distracted: The Running Man

Title: The Running Man

Describe This Movie In One Bruce Almighty Quote:
BRUCE: Lower and debase myself for the amusement of total strangers? Yeah, I could do that. Sounds like fun.

Brief Plot Synopsis: “Ben Richards, come on down!”

Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2 Richard Dawsons out of 5.

Tagline: “Millions hunt. One runs. Everyone watches.”

Better Tagline: “Still more ethical than trophy hunting.”

Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Few things trigger desperation in a man like being unemployed with a sick child. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) knows more than most, having been blackballed from most employment for repeated “insubordination.” But there’s still one place where someone from the slums can earn some New Dollars, and that’s on the Network’s potentially lethal game shows. Producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) thinks the angry Richards is a perfect fit for The Running Man, in which contestants attempt to survive for 30 days while being hounded not just be the Network’s elite Hunters, but by ordinary citizens, who can earn money from contestant sightings.

“Critical” Analysis: Stephen King wrote the Running Man (as Richard Bachman) back in 1982, when constant surveillance was just a glint in Peter Thiel’s eye. Set in an economically depressed and dystopian 2025 (“fiction”), King’s novel was prescient in depicting both the stranglehold elites have on society and the increasing cruelty of reality television. What it may have overemphasized was the oppressed masses capacity for revolution, a pitfall stumbled into by both Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 adaptation and this new version, directed by Edgar Wright (The “Cornetto” Trilogy, Baby Driver).

Wright’s version is more faithful to the book than Glaser’s. Though in truth, it would be harder not to be. The latter starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as the “weak and tubercular” (King’s words) Ben Richards, who played a cop betrayed by his superiors, in a version of the game setting the “Runners” against glandular freaks armed with flamethrowers and chainsaws. Here, Richards’ background is largely intact, and the concept of Runners being hunted by both Network assassins and billions of ordinary citizens remains as well.

Though referring to Glen Powell as “tubercular” is … a bit of a stretch.

So, fine; it’s a better adaptation. But is it a better movie? It certainly looks better, having been shot on location in he UK instead of in a janky Hollywood soundstage. Brolin, Colman Domingo (as Running Man host “Bobby T”), and yes, even Powell, are also better actors than Schwarzenegger, Jim Brown, or Jesse “The Body” Ventura. The special effects, courtesy of ILM, are top notch, and — for the movie’s first half, anyway — it felt like everything was falling into place.

Much like James Gunn, Edgar Wright has a tendency to mix comedy with occasionally shocking violence. This helps offset the brutality of the world Richards and his family inhabits. But should it? Because even this “more faithful” rendition runs counter to the bleak anti-capitalist message of the novel. The Running Man is the closest thing Wright has come to directing a straight action movie since Baby Driver. And some of the sequences are both gripping and amusing, but even the comedic flourishes are abandoned for the film’s third act.

This is also about where the 1987 version bogs down, and for similar reasons. Movies that tell downbeat stories without some form of comeuppance haven’t really been marketable to American audiences since the 1970s. The Schwarzenegger movie took the passages about Richards-inspired proletarian riot in King’s novel and blew them up into full-blown revolution (led by Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa, no less). In Wright’s movie, Richards shelters with a nerdy anarchist (played by Michael Cera) who publishes a zine that will blow the lid off the Network’s abuses.

You read that right: in the year 2025, the masses will be moved to full-scale revolt by a type of publication that saw its popularity peak almost 30 years ago.

It isn’t just the facile revolutionary bullshit, because even though this iteration of The Running Man hews closer to King’s book, it still softens many of its bleaker aspects, including the fate of Richards’ family and his own ambiguous final moments. To be clear, I never expected anyone — Edgar Wright or otherwise — to try and bring the written ending to the screen (though to his credit, he does have Killian acknowledge the possibility). But instead of finding a reasonable alternative, he gives us a finale that makes Arnold walking into the sunset with Maria Conchita Alonso look like The Mist.

Admittedly, you don’t hire Edgar Wright if you’re just looking for a straightforward book treatment. And the aggravating thing is, The Running Man could’ve worked as an actioner that got some jokes in while still highlighting the depravity of a society that feeds its poorest citizens into a meat grinder for entertainment. But the movie’s utter cop-out of an ending (and ham-fisted credits buzzwords) now make me doubt if the director of Hot Fuzz really understands satire as much as I previously thought.

Is There An Arnold Cameo? Sort of.

The Running Man is in theaters today.

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