Film Review - The Running Man
Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
With James Cameron's third Avatar still a full month away, there’s little else on the horizon with the je-ne-sais-quo that one can point to as a verifiable blockbuster (aside from the ever looming Wicked For Good). October was the worst it's been for Hollywood in over two decades - at least after removing the outlier of 2020 from the picture - and with many films in the yearly top ten having barely broken even, it's hard not to come to the logical conclusion that with spending stretched so thin, more and more people seem to be skipping theatrical releases almost entirely. But it can't all be doom and gloom, right? Despite its odd timing in the box office zeitgeist, Edgar Wright's latest joint The Running Man opts to harken back to the heydays of 80s dudebro energy.
Like many recent Stephen King adaptations (which includes The Long Walk, the other form of bipedal locomotion), what once was overtly futuristic satire slowly teeters closer to the hysteria of the modern age. We may not be quite at the point of the 30-day televised manhunt that is the titular Running Man game show, but YouTube entrepreneur and faux-lanthropist Mr Beast seems happy to handwave ethical guidelines for the sake of dangling millions of dollars in front of willing contestants. So why is it that Wright's re-adaptation exists? Is it merely to substitute Arnie’s macho man bravado with a gruff Glen Powell, or is it to dig deeper on the source material?
Therein lies the core issue at the heart of 2025’s The Running Man - it doesn't quite know. Despite some incredible action set-pieces and fun bit performances (Colman Domingo and Michael Cera being standouts, along with leading man Powell giving it his all), the film feels stuck in the middle between wanting to be a bleak sci-fi parable and a campy action shoot-em-up. Comedic riffs served straight go a long way to sell the hyper-masculine lens through which we're exploring this world, but after the midway point, the energy begins to fizzle and without much in the way of Wright’s signature camera moves or editing tricks, the Netflix-grade cinematography becomes exponentially more distracting.
Powell's protagonist Ben Richards, a scruffy everyman with his heart in the right place, becomes symbolic of the film’s underdog nature. We want to root for Ben, warts and all, but whenever there's a moment that calls for an emotional beat, it winds up painfully contrived and tonally out of sync with the rest of the film. Wright seems hesitant to lean fully into either the nihilism of King’s original novella, or the bombastic absurdity of the 1987 Schwarzenegger vehicle. Instead, we get a halfway house of ideas - some compelling, others undercooked - that often chip away at an otherwise satisfying package. By the time the climax arrives, complete with a drone-heavy chase and a monologue that gestures toward systemic collapse, it’s hard not to feel like we’ve seen this all before.
Ultimately, The Running Man (2025) is a curious beast: a film that wants to critique spectacle while indulging in it, that gestures toward emotional depth but never earns it. In a year where theatrical releases are struggling to secure cultural relevance, Wright’s latest feels like it’s stuck on a treadmill - entertaining enough to wholeheartedly recommend to the adrenaline junkies in your life, and solidifying Glen Powell as the strongest candidate for a Tom Cruise protégé, yet never fully breaking free from the pack.
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The Running Man is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.