There are a few gags in director Edgar Wright’s The Running Man worth noting, if not quite laughing at. For one, the film acknowledges the previous Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle with a cute wink; it also spends most of its run-time distancing itself from the original. This is a film with more on its mind. Though what that amounts to is little more than 30 extra minutes.
Co-written with Michael Bacall, Wright’s take on The Running Man harkens instead to the Stephen King source material. We meet Ben Richards (Glen Powell), an angry family man screwed over by his dystopic society for the last time. In this world, the Network (symbolized by a big, red N; another wink) keeps the lower classes under control in part by serving up relentlessly cruel programming. His back against the wall, Richards becomes the star of the titular show, which sets him running for his life towards an inevitable showdown with uber-producer Killian (Josh Brolin). Along the way, Wright’s narrative revels in a few violent political talking points about class, solidarity, and media saturation that, naturally, apply to our current environment. Some of these sequences work better than others (Michael Cera’s role proving to be the film’s high point), yet taken together with Powell’s performance, it’s possible to ride along to the finale. The film’s obviousness isn’t a problem, per se; it’s that Wright can’t seem to click everything together in a way that satisfies. Sure, the revolution will not be televised, but who knew it’s because it would be a slog?
As with most (all?) of Wright’s films, it feels like something gets away from him in The Running Man. For the first half, his film’s tone is accurate and incendiary. We want to join Powell’s Richards in his crusade to save his family and wreak vengeance on his (our?) overlords. Drawn from ample material (and our current reality), the film doesn’t necessarily fail from a lack of imagination. So then, it must be a lack of nerve.
