The year is 2025 and corporations own everything including the United States government. The populace does their best to survive on the scraps provided by their network masters, but a massive class divide has arisen, creating strife and distrust amongst the poorest creating a cycle of control few can escape. Instead of real solutions to actual problems, entertainment is placed at the forefront in order to quell the masses in order to preserve the status quo — don’t think, don’t examine, just be entertained. This is the basis for the 1982 Stephen King novel The Running Man, published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, but if you thought for even a moment that it was about right now in history, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark. As the ‘70s party scene turned into ‘80s excess combined with the rise of the Moral Majority, it was no surprise that King might envision a world where violence was spoon-fed to citizenry in a terrible twist on the myth of “the land of opportunity”. It should surprise fewer still that the narrative holds as much weight now in the supposed future of the novel as it did then, though it comes off as far more prescient. Filmmaker Edgar Wright (Cornetto trilogy; Last Night in Soho) brings his particular brand of dry humor and propulsive editing to a brand-new adaptation of King’s work, wrapping all the cynicism and cautionary messaging inside the delicious bacon of cinematic mayhem so that we might gobble it all up and wake up in the process.
L-R: Katy O’Brian as Laughlin, Glen Powell as Ben Richards, and Martin Herlihy as Jansky in Paramount Pictures’ THE RUNNING MAN. © 2025 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Ben Richards (Glen Powell) just lost his job (again) and his wife, Sheila (Jayme Lawson), can only work so many waitressing shifts to earn the funds they need to buy medicine for their sick daughter. Unable to convince his boss to take him back, he tries out for one of the many game shows that promises big bucks if contestants are willing to risk physical harm in the process. The one game he doesn’t want to compete in is the deadly “The Running Man” which sets people up on a 30-day hide-and-seek game where hiding gets you the potential for $1 billion dollars in winnings and being found gets you killed and the whole country is looking for you. Convinced by “The Running Man” show producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) that joining the show is his best shot at medical care, Ben signs on the dotted line. He knows that this probably means he’s not going home, but he made a promise to see Sheila and his daughter again and he’ll keep it, even if it means burning down the entire network to do it.
Lee Pace as McCone in Paramount Pictures’ THE RUNNING MAN. © 2025 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
If you’re of a certain age, you’re well aware that director Paul Michael Glaser previously adapted The Running Man in 1987 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (Twins), Jim Brown (Mars Attacks!), Jesse Venture (Predator), Maria Conchita Alonso (Predator 2), and Yapet Kotto (Alien). This adaptation adjusted the source material and narrowed the approach, turning Ben Richards into a wrongly-accused man placed inside an American Gladiators-style sandbox-esque environment from which to survive. Edgar’s approach, adapted from the King novel by Michael Bacall (21 Jump Street) and Wright, doesn’t adapt Glaser’s film (therefore avoiding the “remake” descriptor); it seeks to more faithfully adapt King’s work. This cinematic year has given audiences The Life of Chuck, The Monkey, and The Long Walk, each one offering a different philosophy through diverging genres (drama, dark comedy, thriller), and Wright’s The Running Man is a hybrid of them all — a dark comic thriller whose action doesn’t undercut the thematic intention of narrative, supporting it as it causes those in the audience willing to get a little introspective to question why we are as engaged as we are. Are we complacent collaborators or can we recognize the part we play in the farce that is control?
L-R: Katy O’Brian as Laughlin, Glen Powell as Ben Richards, Martin Herlihy as Jansky, and Colman Domingo as Bobby T. in Paramount Pictures’ THE RUNNING MAN. © 2025 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Before someone screams “Woke!” or “stop bringing politics into things,” the original King tale was profoundly political. All Wright and Bacall do is bring it into 2025, the very year the original narrative was set. In an era when we joyfully purchase surveillance tech and install it in our homes (Ring, Alexa, Siri, Google, Samsung TV, iPhone, etc.), while we read news published by billionaire-owned conglomerates and watch entertainment broadcast by nearly the same people as we’re told to believe all that they tell us while denying the reality occurring around us related to health care, law enforcement overreach, government greed, and the failure of political systems to protect the electorate, is the notion that some folks would be so desperate for work that they’d risk life and limb in pursuit of medicine really science fiction? Before you answer that, let’s jump over to the live-action Mr. Beast adaptation of Squid Games for a quick update on how the contestants are doing in their most recent humiliation. Nope — nothing to see here, folks. Just keeping drinking Liquid Death (special sponsor of “The Running Man”), slap some Muscle Slime on to get shredded, and don’t forget to apply Sunblock 5000 before going out today (because who cares about environmental impacts). Their script isn’t quite as satirical as one might expect and can totally be absorbed as transient entertainment, but the depths of it are present and ready for those of us looking for a little more to dive into.
Accomplishing this marriage of entertainment and philosophy is a delicate balance, requiring harmony between cast, narrative, editing, and more. To the first part, Wright has assembled a capable set of leading and supportive performers each with their own powerful moments, creating opportunities for arousal from corporate sedation. Powell is electric as the temperamental-yet-empathetic Richards, utilizing experiences on Hit Man (2023) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022) to craft a character whose rage and frustration at a negatively stacked system that sees him as valuable only for what he produces toward society is all totally conceivable to general audiences. Someone like Powell is equipped to make someone like Richards a reluctant “hero,” someone who’s not in the game to go the distance as some kind of middle-finger to the rich and who struggles as a symbol for the proletariat struggle, all while maintaining believability in his righteous fury and physical capabilities. Compared to Schwarzenegger’s more physically-inclined Richards, Powell’s is a thinker and the script provides opportunities in which to utilize Powell’s natural charisma to create a version of Richards that we believe can think his way out of trouble. As his opposition, Brolin is delightfully disgusting as Killian, offering a performance that’s as slimy as one would expect from a producer who would likely kill his own mother for a ratings boost but would deal away anything else to save his own hide. In supporting roles, it doesn’t get much better than Colman Domingo (The Color Purple), Michael Cera (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), Jayme Lawson (Sinners), Willaim H. Macy (Fargo), Emilia Jones (CODA), and Katy O’Brian (Queens of the Dead; Twisters) — each being given small boxes to fill in terms of narrative roles (television host; supporter; wife; friend; general citizen; fellow competitor) and making each one feel realized. Of them all, the star-making turn is Daniel Erza as Bradley Throckmorton, someone Richards takes a chance on trusting and for whom the audience knowing too much will ruin the fun. What one should know is that Erza breaks through the screen in his scenes, giving them a charge that helps maintain tension even when Richards isn’t on the run.
L-R: Daniel Ezra as Bradley Throckmorton and Angelo Giorgio Gray as Stacey in Paramount Pictures’ THE RUNNING MAN. © 2025 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Helping the tension is the way Wright and frequent collaborator editor Paul Machliss (Baby Driver; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Last Night in Soho) cut the film together for maximum hilarity and drama. Just as vocal and physical delivery by an actor creates the aura of sincerity for the audience to believe what’s happening, Wright and Machliss conjure the film’s energy through perfecting timed edits and cuts. It’s a mash-up of lessons learned from Baby Driver’s music-driven structure (always on beat, always on rhythm) and the in-film trickery that makes Last Night in Soho a compelling psychological thriller. Here, however, it’s not so much what’s done in-camera as much as what we think is happening as scenes occur like intrusive thoughts or memory and we can’t always be sure what’s real or what’s not. The beauty of this is that it feeds directly into the narrative about what is real and what isn’t. We learn this quickly as the introduction for Richards by Domingo’s show host Bobby T. lists lie after lie about who Richards is, painting him as a violent criminal who signed up for cash and the chance to hurt people. This moment signifies for Richards and the audience that anyone who touches “The Running Man” isn’t to be trusted, so these moments wherein even Wright utilizes edits to manipulate us only adds to the fervor of the film and its concepts. Don’t mistake this to mean that Wright creates cause to question the reality of The Running Man, so much as the editing not only functions to generate momentum even through conversations, but pull-and-release tension through moments of quiet reflection or intense desire for action.
In order to keep things spoiler-free, this review leaves off a great deal that works in the film’s favor for the way it taps into historical elements of resistance fighting and abolitionist moments rooted in subculture. It also won’t dive into how the inclusion of one character late in the film, while necessary narratively, does feel a little shoe-horned in terms of executed character arc. Or how there was no real way for the filmmakers to have known just how timely their film might be in the United States given the current socio-political climate from when they started pre-production. But these are things that can be addressed more fully and directly in a later spoiler-filled review. For now, however, buckle up and strap in, The Running Man is getting ready to begin and it can’t start without an audience.
In theaters November 14th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Paramount Pictures The Running Man website.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
Share this:
Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
Leave a Reply