The Running Men -- a review (of both)

The Running Man was another book written by Stephen King under the Richard Bachman name, like The Long Walk, which had also been released as a movie in the Fall of 2025. Like The Long Walk, The Running Man takes place in a dystopian future where the United States has become an authoritarian nightmare where the majority of the population is just barely struggling to survive. But there's a short cut to great wealth, and that's the Running Man, a reality TV show where contestants have to survive a crazed game where they must dodge trained killers who are sent out to get them. And if the contestants lose, they die.

The Running Man was turned into a movie once before, back in 1987, directed by Paul Michael Glaser (who played Starsky on the 1970s cop show Starsky & Hutch). It starred Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role as Ben Richards, a former police officer who has no choice but to join the show to stay alive after being framed. The '87 Running Man was a typical action film of the era with Arnold in his prime. It was very silly, feeling more like a comedy with extreme violence and Arnold's penchant for dopey one liners ("Ah, he had to split."). I've never read The Running Man novel, but it was clear that this movie wasn't really a faithful adaptation, instead being a lesser Arnie action flick that doesn't hold up very well today.

In 2025, the remake of The Running Man was released. Directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) and starring Glenn Powell (Top Gun: Maverick, Twisters), the remake is an improvement over the original film, but not by much. While it does a better job at imagining the totalarian future that Stephen King predicts in his novel, the '25 version of The Running Man is still something of a mess. It's all about the tone, which shifts all over the place from being a serious SF drama to the same wacky comedy vibe that overran the '87 version.

I was actually looking forward to this new Running Man just for the fact that Wright was directing it. An exciting and talented filmmaker who inserts plenty of sly comedy and commentary in his films, Wright's take on The Running Man is nothing more than another big, dumb popcorn film that always puts its vapid action scenes above everything else. The ending feels rushed and unearned. It actually doesn't feel like Wright directed this, it lacks his signature touch, and one wonders if the film was a victim of studio interference. Despite being released much later than The Running Man, The Hunger Games film series and Battle Royale are still far better explorations of these kind of dark themes. --SF

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