What do you get when you have a big-budget movie with an all-star cast, an intriguing premise and an experienced, entertaining director?
Well, if the movie is “The Running Man,” you get mid.
Director Edgar Wright of “Baby Driver” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” leads Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Jayme Lawson and plenty more through a country-trotting tour of a futuristic America, where people are hunted on a game show, and the result is… meh.
Don’t get me wrong, the first 70 percent of this movie is good, if not excellent, but then things start to go off the rails. Or in this case, the tarmac.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the good.
The cast is as excellent as advertised. Glen Powell is magnetic as our protagonist, Ben Richards, balancing the heart the character needs to feel real with the relentless rage that separates him from many action heroes. William H. Macy, Daniel Ezra and Michael Cera all fill excellent character roles as small parts of Richards’ journey for survival.
Lee Pace is an intimidating head goon for the antagonists, and Josh Brolin excels as a sleazy corporate media mogul, but I saw the movie’s scene stealer from a mile away.
Colman Domingo can do no wrong.
Domingo takes what could be a generic, eccentric TV host and turns him into an absolutely captivating performer. You immediately believe he would have the cult following and massive sponsorships the movie displays, because he’s just that charismatic. Every time he’s on screen, the movie levels up.
The film also does a really good job setting up the personal and societal stakes. I was fully expecting them to rush to the game show early, but the first 30 minutes do an excellent job creating the world in which we spend our time with Richards.
The action and tension are very well paced in the first 90 minutes, and it genuinely feels like Richards is constantly in danger. The company that runs the game show, The Network, is well-established as a malicious entity that uses dirty tactics to gain an advantage, giving the audience all the more reason to root for Richards.
But all of this falls away once the film hits act three. This is your final spoiler warning for “The Running Man.”
Let’s get into the… less good.
Edgar Wright’s direction leaves quite a bit to be desired. While most of his movies have very dynamic framing techniques that heighten the action you see, in “The Running Man,” what you see is pretty much what you get. He’s not doing a bad job behind the camera, but I’ve seen him film similar styles of action in more interesting ways.
But the biggest issues come once Ben Richards enters the plane at the beginning of the third act.
The movie tries to resolve every single loose thread on this plane. Not an impossible task, but it’s done in maybe the least satisfying way possible. Most of the conflict resolution is done off-screen. There’s an entirely unnecessary fake-out death that is revealed minutes later, leaving us unable to feel the impact of the character’s absence. The country goes from completely engaged in the game show to turning against The Network entirely, to the point where there’s a riot in the studio.
The movie undercuts all the stakes by adding needless dream sequences and revealing that The Network can manipulate footage to a photorealistic degree. Neither is inherently negative in concept, but the way they’re implemented in the film is incredibly lazy. At any point, the audience now knows that the writers can just decide what we see didn’t actually happen, which completely removes any sense of tension from the film.
“The Running Man” has plenty going for it, and for most of its runtime, it’s an entertaining, tense and worthwhile action comedy. But it completely loses steam in its last 30 minutes, and I walked out of the theater with a bad taste in my mouth.
There’s definitely some solid messaging in the film. It’s pretty outwardly anti-authoritarian, anti-generative AI and pro-working class. Which, based. But good messaging still relies on compelling execution.
If you want a good chase movie about fighting authoritarianism, just watch “One Battle After Another.”
“The Running Man” isn’t a bad movie, but it isn’t really a good one either. It’s a massive missed opportunity for one of the most anticipated movies of the year.
