Movies don’t get much more zeitgeist-ready than the 2025 remake of The Running Man, the year’s second adaptation (after The Long Walk) of a Stephen-King-as-Richard-Bachman dystopian saga, and also a film that seconds One Battle After Another’s support of anarchist rebels taking up arms against a dystopian, corporate-backed government. But for all the targets that director and co-writer Edgar Wright hits with the story’s political and media satire, he allows the pacing to go slack, turning what should feel like an escalating set of stakes into an episodic series of vignettes.
The 1986 Running Man posited a future in which an autocratic government bread-and-circus–ed the population with a garish and savage game show. (Richard Dawson’s thoroughly evil and unctuous reality-competition host seemed like a parody at the time; three decades later, his real-life equivalent would be elected president.) That earlier film’s take on propaganda and media manipulation was cartoonish and overdone; Wright wisely understands that the real thing is much more subtle and harder to detect.
Also much more subtle is Wright’s leading man Glen Powell; whereas Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Ben Richards was another of the performer’s stone-faced, indefatigable, ass-kicking quip machines, Powell’s version is far more vulnerable and rage-driven, compelled to participate in this deadly TV show because he and his wife (an empathetic Jayme Lawson) desperately need healthcare for their young daughter. (Powell may not be a Mr. Universe, but he’s given a lengthy sequence in which he wears only a towel so that what Sydney Sweeney in Anyone But You referred to as his “hot-girl fit” physique is on full display)
While The Running Man ’86 was limited to a TV studio and an obstacle course that occupied a few city blocks, this version sends Powell’s runner from city to city until he winds up in Maine. (It’s a Stephen King adaptation, after all.) Along the way, he must contend with the machinations of ruthless game-show producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) and host Bobby T. (Colman Domingo), who encourage citizens to report on the runners’ whereabouts so that the Hunters, led by the masked McCone (Lee Pace) can swoop in and eliminate them, preferably live during prime time.
Ben Richards proves himself to be a resilient contestant, building up support along the way, even as the show manipulates his interviews to turn him into a monster. Wright and co-writer Michael Bacall (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) efficaciously capture the twists and turns of corporate-backed news and manufactured consent, while production designer Marcus Rowland (Last Night in Soho) nails the tricky aesthetic of five-minutes-in-the-future, mixing the gleam of technology and the beaten-down neighborhoods of the downtrodden in a way that feels both relevant and organic. Similarly, costume designer Julian Day (F1: The Movie) rethinks the game-show’s unitard running suits in a manner far removed from the spandex monstrosities of the previous movie.
Where the new The Running Man stumbles is in getting Ben to the finish line; the longer he stays alive, the more danger he’s in, which means the tension should build. Instead, we get side-quests like hiding out with a revolutionary (Michael Cera) or kidnapping an innocent bystander (Emilia Jones, CODA) — who comes to realize Ben is nothing like how the show has portrayed him — that should support the film’s narrative throughline but wind up diluting it instead.
The Running Man has no shortage of vivid performances or timely notions about autocracy and entertainment; ironic, then, that this film is a production of the Paramount division of Skydance, which is currently in the process of gutting CBS News. It’s not the first time that a corporation has marketed rebellion while trafficking in repression.
Director: Edgar Wright
Screenwriter: Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright, based on the novel by Stephen King
Cast: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Emilia Jones, Michael Cera, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin
Producers: Simon Kinberg, Nira Park, Edgar Wright
Executive producers: George Linder, James Biddle, Rachael Prior, Audrey Chon, Pete Chiappetta, Anthony Tittanegro, Andrew Lary
Cinematographer: Chung-hoon Chung
Production design: Marcus Rowland
Editing: Paul Machliss
Music: Steven Price
Sound design: Ben Meechan, Jeremy Price, sound designers
Production companies: Paramount Pictures, Domain Entertainment, Kinberg Genre, Complete Fiction
In English
133 minutes
