Cast: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Sean Hayes, Katy O’Brian with Colman Domingo and Josh Brolin
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Based on the novel by Stephen King
Director: Edgar Wright
In Irish Cinemas: 14th November 2025
Stephen King’s The Running Man, first published in 1982 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, envisioned a bleak 2025 America ruled not by politicians but by a sprawling corporate empire. This regime monopolises truth, weaponises entertainment, and pacifies the masses through the Free-Vee network, a grotesque blend of reality television, propaganda, and blood sport designed to distract the poor from the rigged machinery that keeps them there.
Now that the novel’s imagined future has caught up with our present, the parallels feel uncomfortably sharp. King’s prophetic fiction, once a warning, now reads like a mirror. Edgar Wright’s new adaptation, a reimagining of both the book and the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film, arrives loaded with urgency and spectacle, but its punch lands soft. Despite its kinetic energy and high-octane action, the film feels strangely hollow, and it does little to quell questions about Glen Powell’s strength as a marquee leading man.
Co-written by Wright and his Scott Pilgrim vs. the World collaborator Michael Bacall, this version adheres more faithfully to King’s grim source material than the cartoonish original movie. Yet Wright’s trademark irreverence, so electrifying in Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver, clashes with the story’s oppressive portrait of economic despair, corporate tyranny, and the commodification of violence. The result is a film that moves fast but somehow drags, equal parts thrilling and exhausting, compelling until it finally wears you down.
Powell stars as Ben Richards, a volatile working-class man with a checkered employment record and a tendency to challenge authority. Fired once again, this time for saving coworkers during an industrial accident, he’s desperate to afford medication for his gravely ill two-year-old daughter. In Wright’s vision of near-future America, the poor are ravaged by poverty, disease, and an inflated pharmaceutical market that forces them to rely on black-market remedies. Ben’s wife, Sheila (Jayme Lawson), works herself to exhaustion at a sleazy club catering to the elite, and he’s determined to spare her further humiliation. Out of desperation, he auditions for the Network’s slate of sadistic game shows.
Sheila makes him promise never to enter the deadliest one of all, The Running Man, a televised manhunt that promises a $1 billion reward no one has ever lived long enough to claim. Even the “tamer” shows are nightmares, like Spin the Wheel. In this quiz game, every wrong answer spins contestants into injury or death, hosted with unholy glee by an unrecognisable Sean Hayes as Gary Greenbacks. The long queues of applicants underscore the nation’s despair; half the population, it seems, is waiting for a chance to die on television for money.
Ben’s anger catches the attention of Network officials, earning him a fast track to the upper levels of recruitment. His tests mark him as a prime candidate for The Running Man, alongside punk daredevil Jenni (Katy O’Brian) and hapless everyman Tim Jansky (Martin Herlihy). The Network neatly classifies its players into archetypes — the “Hopeless Dude,” doomed from the start; the “Negative Man,” who seeks a glorious death; and the “Final Dude,” the one who might make it. We don’t need a diagram to know where Ben fits.
He initially refuses the offer, clinging to his promise to Sheila. But Network boss Dan Killian (a disappointingly bland Josh Brolin) manipulates him with intimate knowledge of his family’s hardships. “You’re the angriest man ever to audition,” Killian purrs, convincing Ben that his rage could make him a star or at least a survivor.
The game spans 30 days of survival across the entire city-state of Co-Op City, where a kill squad hunts contestants known as the Hunters, led by the masked McCone (Lee Pace, criminally underused). Unlike the enclosed arena of the 1987 film, the whole dystopian metropolis becomes a playground of pursuit. Every screen blares the chase, while the studio audience howls for blood. Viewers at home can even join in by filming and reporting sightings for cash prizes, a chilling twist on influencer culture and surveillance capitalism. Hosting the chaos is Colman Domingo’s Bobby T., a charismatic sadist whose smarmy commentary turns human suffering into prime-time theatre.
After a strong setup filled with Wright’s signature whip-pans and flashy transitions, the film loses steam, slipping into a repetitive rhythm of chase, escape, and reset. Ben’s odyssey from New York to Boston introduces a series of would-be allies: Molie (William H. Macy), a crusty underground agitator with fake IDs and disguises; Bradley (Daniel Ezra), aka “The Apostle,” a radical streamer inciting rebellion online; and Elton (Michael Cera), a gleeful anarchist who hides Ben but can’t resist chaos. Cera, reunited with his Scott Pilgrim director, steals scenes as a deranged freedom fighter. Still, most side characters fade quickly, including Ben’s wife and Amelia (Emilia Jones), a wealthy realtor taken hostage in a carjacking that inadvertently awakens her conscience.
That leaves Powell to carry the film, and while he throws himself into the physicality and grit of the role, sprinting, bleeding, and brawling his way through every frame, he lacks the ineffable spark that transforms determination into charisma. His presence evokes Tom Cruise’s intensity, particularly in a midair finale that seems tailored for him, but he never quite ascends to mythic hero status.
Wright occasionally teases his old flair, with a sly cutaway to Lycra-clad dancers recalling the cheesy spectacle of the 1987 film, but overall the movie feels restrained, as if the weight of his own material boxed in the director. The pacing sputters, the satire softens, and the fun seeps away. The Running Man wants to be scathing and thrilling and profound all at once, but it ends up merely efficient. There are moments of sharp visual wit and a few welcome cameos (yes, that really is Schwarzenegger’s face on the $100 bill), but the film never achieves the pulse or purpose its premise promises.
Overall: 6/10
Movie Reviewer
