Film Review: The Running Man

Welcome back to the blog readers. As you may know by now, probably the most influential person to the world of film over the last 5 decades has been author Stephen King, whose work has given way to some of the best films over this period. King fans are eating good this year with four solid adaptations of his work: The Life of Chuck, The Long Walk (both 2025), and It: Welcome to Derry (2025-). Knowing this film was coming gave me excitement, because I know how good the book has been received and how poorly the Arnold version of this book was received. Would the crew behind this version be able to redeem the previous version, or would it be pushed to the wayside? Stick around to find out.

The Running Man was directed by Edgar Wright from a screenplay by Wright and Michael Bacall, based on the novel The Running Man by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman). The film stars Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Sean Hayes, Colman Domingo, and Josh Brolin. In the film, set in an authoritarian near-future, a struggling man named Ben Richards finds himself taking part in a deadly game show where survival is the only rule in the hopes of giving his wife and daughter a better life.

One of the main reasons I have been getting more and more excited for this film was because of how much I am starting to love Glen Powell, and he has been killing it in every project I have seen him in thus far. I was curious to see how this film would turn out since the reviews turned out to be more mixed than I would have hoped for a film of this magnitude. But fuck all those mixed reviews, because this film was AWESOME. Is it Shakespeare? Not a chance. But you do not go into a film like this expecting to get Shakespeare. What I got was a great time where I could stuff popcorn and enjoy the social commentary and Powell's performance, although I think the film could have been trimmed down a bit.

I want to start by talking about the performance of Glen Powell. Powell is someone who completely blew up when Top Gun: Maverick (2022) came out, and he has been taking over the industry since, appearing in projects such as Devotion (2022), Anyone but You (2023), Hit Man, Twisters (2024), and the series Chad Powers (2025). Him taking on the role of Ben Richards was going to be a daunting task, especially since Arnold Schwarzenegger took the role in the 1987 film, but I think Powell was electric. I said about halfway throughout the film that nobody else could have pulled off this version of the character, and that Powell's natural charisma was shining through. You feel every emotion that Powell's character feels, and that is one of his star qualities as an actor. This guy is going to go places, and I cannot wait to see what success is primed to come his way.

I next want to talk about how well I thought the action in this film was executed. I know films like John Wick (2014-) have really raised the bar for what action could look like, and I am aware that not every film is going to meet that bar. What I am looking for in a film that takes its action seriously and knows when to factor it in for the maximum effect, and I think this film did it perfectly. From the scene at the hostel to everything involving Michael Cera's character, or the plane scene at the end (that was horribly edited and I will talk about that later), this film is not short on showing how dangerous this world can be (and why I would love to see more stories coming out of this world.

And finally in terms of the positives of this film, I want to talk about the themes this film tries (and succeeds) to present to us. When Stephen King (who wrote the original novel under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) wrote the original novel, the book was set in this year, 2025 (which makes the film releasing in 2025 even funnier of a coincidence). One of the main themes that King really dove into was that of corporatocracy, in which corporations control or influence the government. Not only are we seeing the birthing of that in real life, we are seeing that in this film as well, with the "Network" being in control of everything. Ben Richards is the conduit for the reader (or viewer) to rise up against the corporations (or the people who control all) and break the chains.

Now I am going to lump my two big negatives into one paragraph, because I really do not want to waste your time with extra fluff to get my point across. The firs thing I want to point out is the runtime of the film. The film runs for 2 hours and 13 minutes (or 133 minutes), and I think that runtime was way too long. You could have cut like 15-20 minutes of this film and I think the pacing would have been much better, especially when you pair a pretty mediocre pace with pretty terrible editing. One thing I despise when it comes to editing is when we see multiple camera cuts in a span of 30 seconds, because it becomes confusing and hard to watch and follow along with the action. This film does that in some areas, and it becomes nauseating, especially in the climax with the plane fight. I cannot believe one of the most solid filmmakers would allow something like that in the final cut of one of his films. Very poor decision by all.

In conclusion, The Running Man is a timely action film about the dangers or corporatocracy and monopolies, anchored by solid action and a star-making performance by Glen Powell. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.