Review: The Running Man is One Powell After Another.

Perhaps Glen Powell was workshopping his USP. Cruise runs, Brad eats, Denzel delivers iconic lines. With that in mind, The Running Man arrives as another showcase of Powell’s special talent….wearing disguises. He’s a great lead in this adaptation of Stephen King’s novel (with more than a passing nod to Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 movie).

This time, Edgar Wright helms the story of Ben Richards, a poverty-stricken working man whose insubordination has led to multiple firings. With a sick baby and a wife (Jayme Lawson) forced to work in a seedy club, something has to give. Ben’s world is 1984 adjacent, ran by a dystopian media lit by neon screens. When a desperate Ben tries to join a reality show to make a fast buck his anger and physique alert network owner Dan Killian (John Brolin) who engineers Ben’s hiring for his top show The Running Man, presented by larger-than-life Bobby (Colman Domingo). If Ben can survive for 30 days without being found (read: killed) by a group of hunters led by Evan (Lee Pace, cosplaying Watchmen’s Rorschach) he’ll become an instant billionaire.

With no way to say no, Ben is thrown into a relentlessly inventive series of difficult situations while Bobby spews lies about him to an audience baying for blood. Big explosions rub up against social discourse as Ben escapes a terrible demise. Luckily, some good people are willing to help him, including a scene-stealing turn from Michael Cera, but The Running Man is neither a satire nor a tragedy, thanks to Wright’s comic flair.

It’s also a weirdly moralistic experience. Ben comes across as unlikable and unhinged and Wright cannot stop making digs at his own audience. There’s an ongoing bit about Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which suggests that watching reality TV is akin to state-sponsored murder. And later, CODA’s Emilia Jones plays a key part in events, where she bears the brunt of Ben’s ire for the heinous crimes of possession of an expensive scarf and a driverless car. Pace looks great, yet his and Jones’s characters are paper-thin, and the film ends at least five times before it decides to just cop out.

The actors give their all, the world feels real and as always with a Wright movie, the soundtrack is sensational, but there is almost nothing that makes this film a preferential watch to its superior predecessor.

Yet there is a light at the end of this booby-trapped tunnel. He’s not the next Schwarzenegger, nor another Cruise. The Running Man showcases Glen Powell as the natural successor to Bruce Willis, and that’s a platform worth running on.