The Running Man Review | An Explosive Dystopian Reboot That Forgets Where & Why It’s Sprinting

Stephen King’s The Running Man (1982) imagined a near-future America ruled by corporate media, where survival itself became a televised spectacle. Set in 2025, the novel now collides uncomfortably with the present. Edgar Wright’s new adaptation arrives with a weighty inheritance: King’s bleak dystopia on one side, Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film on the other. Wright’s version lands somewhere in between, and that middle ground proves to be more limiting than inspiring.

Set in a near-future United States governed by the Network, a state-controlled media conglomerate, the story follows Ben Richards (Glen Powell), a working class man pushed into competing on “The Running Man”, the Network’s most lethal and lucrative reality show. Contestants are hunted for thirty days by professional killers, with cash rewards escalating the longer they survive. The prize is astronomical. Survival, theoretically, is possible. No one has ever won. Richards’ wife (Jayme Lawson) and daughter are present only as narrative triggers. His daughter is severely ill and remains largely offscreen, her condition repeatedly invoked to justify his decision to enter the Games Network for money. Lawson’s character is introduced as financially cornered and emotionally strained, considering dangerous work to survive. Once Richards joins “The Running Man”, she fades almost entirely from the film. Their disappearance underscores the film’s priorities: spectacle overtakes consequence and the personal cost of survival is sidelined in favour of forward momentum.

Powell cuts a nearly convincing figure as Richards, blending physical competence with a restless, barely contained, monotonous fury. He looks the part and moves well through the film’s increasingly elaborate set pieces. Yet the performance never quite deepens beyond its surface rhythms. Richards’ rage is constant, almost default. It is less a response to oppression than a personality setting. Powell’s star quality is evident, but the film never gives him the dramatic architecture required to test it.

Opposite him is Josh Brolin as Dan Killian, the Network executive who packages suffering as prime-time entertainment. Brolin brings his usual ease with menace, flashing immaculate veneers and oily charm. Killian is detestable on cue, though frustratingly static. His cruelty lacks escalation; his unravelling feels perfunctory. The film hints at a grander, more grotesque villainy than it ever commits to staging. Colman Domingo, by contrast, understands the assignment completely. As Bobby Thompson, the flamboyant host of “The Running Man”, he injects the film with theatricality and danger. Draped in glittering costumes and weaponised smiles, Domingo offers the film’s sharpest performance. He alone suggests how monstrous this world might have been if Wright had leaned harder into excess.

The film is polished, energetic and competently assembled as a popcorn action-flick. It is also curiously hollow at the same time for those who expect a certain standard of competence from Wright. The Running Man wants to be urgent without being confrontational and entertaining without being irresponsible. The result is a film that moves briskly, looks expensive and rarely lingers in the mind. Mildly impressive in execution, it remains largely underwhelming in impact. King’s novel, written under the Richard Bachman pseudonym, was fuelled by desperation. Ordinary people were driven to unspeakable acts by poverty, surveillance and a media ecosystem engineered to erase empathy.

Wright understands the mechanics of that world but seems hesitant to let them bruise. The film gestures toward moral collapse while keeping its hands clean. Wright’s direction is assured but surprisingly anonymous. The visual wit and rhythmic precision that defined Hot Fuzz (2007) and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) appear only in fragments. The action is serviceable: car chases, shootouts and large-scale explosions are staged technically well, but with little signature. Even the editing, typically Wright’s greatest weapon, feels blunt and occasionally sloppy. The film’s pacing is another liability. The first act is dense with exposition; the final act bloated with late-arriving characters and rushed resolutions. 

Tonally, The Running Man struggles to reconcile satire with sincerity. The humour lands sporadically, rarely sharply. The social commentary is direct, but toothless. Inequality, state violence and media manipulation are invoked, then flattened into spectacle. Wright seems wary of offending either mainstream sensibilities or blockbuster expectations and the film suffers from that caution. Much of the supporting cast is underused. Michael Cera appears briefly and vanishes. Katy O’Brien is well-cast but sidelined. Emilia Jones’ character feels extraneous, contributing little beyond narrative drag. A strong ensemble is reduced to functional roles—their potential sacrificed to pacing issues and tonal uncertainty.

The “Hunters” themselves, once iconic embodiments of televised sadism, are disappointingly generic. They lack personality, menace and mythic flair. Compared to their flamboyant predecessors in the Schwarzenegger film, they barely register as threats. Richards quite conveniently annihilates them all by himself, as the audience expects him to. The film rarely pushes its imagery far enough to justify its restrictions. It feels designed to shock without scarring, to provoke without discomfort.

By the time the film reaches its conclusion, it opts for safety. It closes doors instead of opening wounds. For a story about a society addicted to cruelty, the refusal to linger on fallout feels like a betrayal of its premise. The Running Man is not a failure. It is slick, watchable and occasionally sharp. It understands the shape of its source material but not its ferocity. Wright delivers a film that functions efficiently as studio entertainment, while sidestepping the discomfort that once made King’s story sting. The result is a dystopia that looks familiar, sounds timely and feels oddly distant. In chasing balance, the film sacrifices conviction. What remains is a competent, occasionally engaging reboot that never quite earns its urgency. For a story about running for one’s life, it rarely feels like it’s risking anything at all.