Edgar Wright | 2hr 13min
On FreeVee’s tamest game shows, humiliation is the price of admission, guaranteeing desperate hopefuls a modest pay out in exchange for their dignity. For audiences craving bloodsport and thrill-seekers courting oblivion however, there is The Running Man. Stephen King’s dystopian vision of a televised contest pitting one fugitive against an entire nation was provocative enough to inspire a 1980s cult adaptation, and in Edgar Wright’s adaptation of this material, he specifically pushes it into a neon-drenched arena of deepfakes, propaganda, and mass complicity.
After all, despite the armed crews of merciless hunters scouring every inch of this authoritarian United States for Ben Richards, they are not FreeVee’s most powerful weapon. The media narratives that the network nefariously spins cut deeper than any blade, effectively turning an entire nation into willing executioners hoping for some minor reward. If Ben can evade capture and survive for 30 days, then he will claim the $1 billion prize that will not only save his daughter from illness, but free his family from poverty. If he fails, he will join the long list of contestants whose gruesome deaths simply fed the ratings beast.
Never mind that seemingly no player before has ever won this game, nor that FreeVee’s diabolical rigging is evident to anyone with the slightest critical instinct. The sheer naivety that Wright builds into Ben’s characterisation defies belief, essentially convincing him to buy into an impossible challenge sold on the promise of hope and heroism. While Wright crafts one of his more conventional protagonists through contrived backstory and clunky exposition, it is up to Glen Powell’s furious performance to inject this otherwise formulaic arc with urgency and grit, elevating the stakes as he resourcefully wriggles out of tight spots.
That The Running Man should also be Wright’s largest, most expensive film to date also proves to be double-edged. As Ben encounters anti-network revolutionaries and opportunistic predators alike on his cross-country journey, this somewhat bloated narrative tends to stall, before rushing towards a muddled conclusion that sidelines its own protagonist. At the same time, the ambition that comes with such sweeping storytelling makes for an extraordinary showcase of cyberpunk worldbuilding, owing a great deal to the retrofuturist sensibilities of Blade Runner. While Wright’s typically kinetic style of brisk montages, match cuts, and tracking shots is diluted here, he is at least given the opportunity to flex his visual ingenuity in new registers, cloaking Ben in the dingy lighting of urban tenements and dwarfing him beneath imposing brutalist structures.
Although Wright’s cynical humour surfaces in a standout sequence that sets a string of darkly comic deaths to The Rolling Stones, the suspense built around this televised manhunt more broadly adheres to classical thriller beats, while still allowing room for his typically imaginative action choreography. Elevating this beyond mere genre exercise is rather its scathing indictment of media manipulation – by framing contestants as freeloaders trying to game the system, FreeVee effectively redirects the people’s discontent towards a common enemy, even going so far as to deploy AI-generated footage that explicitly villainises them. Truth is a malleable construct in the hands of this corporate media empire, so for Ben, survival depends on rewriting a narrative that has already gone viral.
As it is, apparently not even FreeVee’s fabrications can mask this fugitive’s raw anger. From Ben’s spark of defiance, a nationwide resistance begins to ignite, and the content engine that once pacified the masses gradually becomes the catalyst for their revolt. Where King’s novel borrowed from the likes of George Orwell, Wright channels the gladiatorial spectacle and rebellion of The Hunger Games, yet sharpens its edge further through his own scornful satire. Uneven plotting aside, The Running Man imperfectly thrives in its stylish, sardonic thrills, boldly traversing a deluded country to expose the pervasive reach and corrosive core of its duplicitous propaganda machine.
The Running Man is currently playing in cinemas.
