Everything is wrong with Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, and I say that as someone who’s long been rooting for him. I’m a big fan of his early films Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007). I liked his 2021 rock-documentary The Sparks Brothers, and I even appreciated parts of Baby Driver (2017) and Last Night in Soho (2021).
But his latest is such a misfire that’s downright weird.
The Running Man isn’t quite a remake of the cheesy old 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle mainly because Wright wanted to do a more faithful take on the original source material: Stephen King’s very prescient 1982 novel. It’s about a dystopian future America run by a corporate media network, and it was written by King to depict the distant year of 2025. In other words, it should’ve been a cinch to make an action movie that appeals to the immiserated American masses in our very real dystopian 2025, instead of the expensive box-office dud this is.
Maybe that’s because Wright doesn’t seem invested at all in connecting the dots. He keeps depicting in broad strokes the dire authoritarian turn America has taken and hinting at a resistance movement operating underground among the vast immiserated underclass, but it’s all kept bland and politically vague. Vague enough for King to declare proudly that he loves this adaptation because it’s “a bipartisan thrill ride.”
Where’s Robocop director Paul Verhoeven when you need him? His version of The Running Man might’ve set audiences’ hair on fire in the best possible way.
Wright’s movie centers on one titanic network that rules the nation while the vast majority of desperately poor people alleviate their sufferings by watching the network’s most popular game show, The Running Man. The show is structured to feature three of their own — their fellow poors — as contestants in a “Most Dangerous Game” scenario, trying to survive for thirty days on the run…
Auteur: Eileen Jones
