The Running Man (2025)
Stephen King wrote his book The Running Man in 1982, setting his dystopian nightmare in the year 2025. Well, we’ve arrived, and the uncomfortable truth is that reality has closed the gap rather more than anyone would like. Edgar Wright’s new adaptation has to contend with that temporal collision, which ought to give the film a sharp edge. Instead, what we get is something competent, occasionally thrilling, but curiously toothless when it matters most.
The setup remains bracingly bleak. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) scrapes by in a corporate-ruled America where poverty is endemic and healthcare is a luxury. When his infant daughter falls desperately ill and he can’t afford treatment, Richards does what desperate men do: he signs up for “The Running Man,” a televised bloodsport where contestants try to survive thirty days as professional killers and ordinary citizens hunt them down. The prize is a billion dollars. The catch is that nobody has ever survived to claim it. Richards gets a twelve-hour head start and a thousand dollars in cash, then has to film daily proof-of-life videos or lose everything.
Powell handles the lead role with genuine conviction. There’s a simmering intensity to his Richards, a working-class fury that feels earned rather than performed. He’s particularly effective opposite Michael Cera, who plays a gadget-obsessed dissident with twitchy energy, and Colman Domingo, who sinks his teeth into the role of the show’s host with visible relish. Josh Brolin’s producer radiates the kind of corporate menace that doesn’t need to raise its voice. These performances elevate material that sometimes struggles to match their commitment.
Wright remains a gifted craftsman. A hotel confrontation unfolds with real tension, and a car chase filmed mostly from inside a boot manages to feel fresh despite the genre’s exhausted catalogue of vehicular mayhem. You can see his technical skill at work. What you can’t always see, I would argue, is his personality. The film runs two hours and thirteen minutes, which is at least twenty minutes too long for a story about a man racing against time. Momentum stalls. Exposition arrives in clumsy chunks. Where Wright’s earlier films danced with precision, this one occasionally trudges.
The dulled satirical edge proves more troubling. King’s novel imagined a world where economic desperation meets reality television’s hunger for spectacle, and the result was genuinely savage. Wright gestures at these ideas without committing. The film acknowledges that we’ve built a society addicted to watching others suffer, then backs away before drawing blood. Perhaps there’s a worry about alienating audiences who might recognise themselves in those baying crowds. Fair enough, but it leaves the film caught between pulp entertainment and social commentary, not quite succeeding at either.
What works? Powell’s charisma carries considerable weight. Individual sequences showcase Wright’s considerable talent. The supporting cast understands the assignment. As Friday evening entertainment, it delivers. But there’s a nagging sense that something sharper, meaner, and more necessary was buried somewhere in the development process. The film we’ve got is perfectly watchable. The film we might have had would have left scars.
For those seeking competent action with flashes of intelligence, The Running Man will suffice. For those hoping Wright might interrogate our contemporary relationship with spectacle and suffering, this feels like a retreat rather than an advance. Not a failure, mind you. Just a film that plays it safer than its subject matter deserves.