Open this photo in gallery:
Glen Powell plays Ben Richards, a blue-collar agitator that is desperate for cash to aid his struggling family, in new film The Running Man.Ross Ferguson/The Associated Press
The Running Man
Directed by Edgar Wright
Written by Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall, based on the novel by Stephen King
Starring Glen Powell, Josh Brolin and Colman Domingo
Classification 14A; 133 minutes
Opens in theatres Nov. 14
There must be something in the air when two movies based on two different Stephen King novels, both focused on the physical pace of one’s movement, get released just two months apart.
In September, we got director Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk, which followed a televised contest in which – to distract the economically depressed spirits of a near-future America – impoverished participants embark on a march to the death, the last one standing earning a life-altering fortune. Now comes Edgar Wright’s new version of The Running Man, following the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, which centres on a televised contest in which – to distract the economically depressed spirits of a near-future America – impoverished participants embark on a race to the death, the last one standing earning a life-altering fortune. Huh.
Film Review: Sappy but slick drama The Life of Chuck showcases the softer side of Stephen King
This coincidence shouldn’t be interpreted as a knock on King – the man knows what he likes and is talented enough make both novels work on their own despite their many similarities. But the moment has to come down to either a) an awfully curious case of movie-release timing; b) evidence of Hollywood’s obsession with and reliance on King-penned dystopias; or c) a fascinating read inside the anxious mood of corporate America, whose leaders must be so concerned about the possibility of a very real revolution by the impoverished masses that they figure the best way to head off such a rebellion is to produce movies that act as pressure-release valves.
Regrettably, Wright’s version of The Running Man is a solid “D,” both in grade level and in pop-quiz choice, ignoring all of the answers above.
Presented with every opportunity to say or do something remotely new or compelling, Wright, typically a talented stylist, elects to shrug his shoulders, delivering a wafer-thin confection that is aggressively disinterested in both ideas and action. Lawrence’s thin but economical thriller The Long Walk may not quite keep pace with King’s source material. But Wright’s version of The Running Man stumbles out of the gate, before shooting itself in the foot, over and over.
Film Review: Despite stellar work from Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value is a fixer-upper of a family drama
The year is undefined (in the book, it’s set in the horribly far off “2025”), but whatever era the film happens to be set in, it sucks. The poor are plentiful and crowded into ghettos without access to health care. The rich are thriving in gated communities. And the most popular entertainment in the country is a reality-TV series in which three unlucky schmoes must evade capture by a team of network-employed commandos for 30 days, the winner earning a cool $1-billion. (The presidential mug adorning the prize money? That’d belong to Schwarzenegger, in one of the film’s few good jokes.)
Desperate for cash to aid his struggling family, a blue-collar agitator named Ben Richards (Glen Powell) takes up the challenge, and soon turns the game onto its head, infuriating its callous producer (Josh Brolin) and bemusing its unhinged host (Colman Domingo, deftly meshing original Running Man master of ceremonies Richard Dawson with James Brown and The Hunger Games’ flamboyant Caesar Flickerman). Absolutely anyone who has ever seen a movie can tell where things go from here, but predictability isn’t the problem. The real disappointment is how little effort Wright and his longtime screenwriting partner, Michael Bacall (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), put into greasing the mechanics of the on-the-run formula.
The set pieces are choppy and flavourless, the dialogue often too sitcom-level hacky and the characters – who just need a little bit of energy to enliven their stock familiarity – are alternately boneheaded or just plain dull. Powell is an exceptionally charming presence onscreen, dashing and slick, but the film makes the crucial error of asking him to also be the angriest man on the planet – and the guy who might be the next coming of Tom Cruise cannot convincingly do “mad,” at least not yet. There is a barely visible but still aggravating smirkiness to Powell’s work here that vaporizes the righteous fury that Ben is supposed to embody.
Film Review: Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is an uninspired show of smoke and mirrors
Then again, there’s not that much in Wright’s ostensibly grand indictment of the U.S. to get all that hot and bothered about in the first place. This is a film whose social satire consists of cutaways to a reality-TV show of bickering divas called Americanos (starring Debi Mazar, always welcome to see) that is just a facsimile of the Real Housewives phenomenon. There is no real commentary here, only replication. As in: Wow, how stupid is this, and by extension, are we? Okay, fair. But what else have you got? Anything?
One might think that today’s real-deal nightmare world, where UFC matches are set to be staged on the White House lawn and ICE raids provide their own daily dose of Running Man-esque viral videos, would be enough material for Wright and Bacall to sink their teeth into. Instead, we get genuine product placement (Domingo’s character hawks Liquid Death mineral water), gags about the importance of ratings that Network’s Howard Beale would scoff at and a Netflix joke (the big bad television network that torments Ben has a giant singular “N” for its logo) that rests uneasily on the fine line between stupid and clever.
There is one point, though, where Wright’s talent for mixing shock and style pleasantly collide. In a mid-film interlude, Ben finds brief sanctuary with an unassuming revolutionary, who turns out to be a bloodthirsty psycho and is played by Wright’s old Scott Pilgrim star Michael Cera. As the eternally boyish Cera fires off a Super Soaker-turned-weapon of death, scorching armed goons like s’mores over a campfire, The Running Man finds a moment of deranged grace fit for a king. Or a King, rather.
