Desperate to save his sick daughter, working-class Ben Richards is convinced by The Running Man's charming but ruthless producer to enter the deadly competition game as a last resort. But Ben's defiance, instincts, and grit turn him into an unexpected fan favorite — and a threat to the entire system. As ratings skyrocket, so does the danger, and Ben must outwit not just the Hunters, but a nation addicted to watching him fall.
Rated 3.0 / 5 from 2 logs on Katalog
Expected it would be worse. Acting is fine, story is interesting. Don't expect wonders but all in all, it is a fun watch.
Running Man is… fine. It looks great. The photography is sharp, the cutting is clean, the dialogue works moment to moment. Edgar Wright is a director I genuinely admire, and the cast is loaded: Lee Pace, Coleman Domingo, Michael Cera, all doing solid, professional work. I have no complaints there. I’m morally unable to complain about Lee Pace anyway. The problems start earlier. The source is Stephen King’s The Running Man. I have complicated feelings about King, but I’ll never pretend he doesn’t have craft. The book is pure him: sour, angry, Eighties misery dressed as a thriller. I read half, skimmed the rest. It’s intentionally bleak. If that’s your thing, enjoy the ride. So why hand that book to Edgar Wright and then chain him to it? Did no one in the room stop to ask whether they will break the source text or break the director because you have to choose one. Hint: they didn’t choose one. It’s a bad marriage on paper, and it stays a bad marriage on screen. I can imagine the Daniels of Everything Everywhere fame making that collision of tones work, but only if you let them blow it up and rebuild it from scratch. Tarantino could probably do it too: strip the politics down, make it warped and funny and unexpectedly humane, turn it into an argument with the text instead of a literal illustration. If you don’t want that, there are other obvious roads: give it to someone who actually lives in science fiction—Villeneuve, who can shoot scope and despair and give dignity to goofy sci-fi concepts—or to a technician like Nolan, who would at least deliver a machine that runs from first frame to last. What you don’t do is this half-committed shuffle. You don’t make a movie that’s a little zany, a little political, mostly loyal to the book until it suddenly loses its nerve. By that point, the tone is already wrecked. Bleak books can make great, even funny, adaptations. You can turn real darkness into comedy or into something for kids—The Hunchback of Notre Dame proves that and I’ll fight anyone on it. But this isn’t that. This isn’t even close. And, yes, it’s telling that I almost forgot to mention Glen Powell as the lead. That says plenty about how little he registers in the “action star” role. The movie wants him to be iconic; he barely manages to be present.
