Copyright TIME
There’s something vaguely superior about most dystopian movies. We can all point to terrible events and modes of thinking in our current world and convince ourselves things are only going to get worse—that’s easy. But when a filmmaker puts his most dismal vision for our collective future onscreen, we’re somehow supposed to pretend these terrible premonitions could never have occurred to little old us, instead hailing them as a feat of imaginative brilliance. An authoritarian government that sponsors ruthless reality TV shows in which desperate individuals compete for cash to pay their basic medical bills? That sounds pretty awful. But in 2025, it’s not really that far-fetched, and any action thriller built around an idea like that needs to be mechanically sound, and thrilling, by itself. Ben is out of options, which is why he decides to try out for one of those sadistic government-sponsored game shows; he’s so fit and hunky and rage-fueled that he lands a spot on the most dangerous one, a fight-to-the-finish marathon called The Running Man, in which a trio of contestants, presented to the audience as violent, worthless enemies of society, are sent out into the world to outrun a gang of ruthless hired hunters. There’s also an audience-participation element: viewers are encouraged to spot the contestants in the wild and alert the authorities. (“Record-Report-Reward” is one of the show’s slogans.) If Ben can evade the hunters for 30 days, he’ll win a huge pile of “new dollars”—enough to catapult him into the top 1% of global wealth, according to the grand pooh-bah of this entertainment enterprise, Josh Brolin’s weaselly Dan Killian, who’s certain that Ben’s hot bod, matched by his equally hot temper, will make for great television. Of course, Ben is being grossly misled; the game is rigged, and though he sort of knows it, he thinks he might be able to win anyway. Powell telegraphs Ben’s doggedness with powerful gestures: He squints and glowers; his chin juts out just so. After dropping by to visit an old pal (a world-weary William H. Macy) and pick up some cool disguises, he tries to slip into anonymity, first in New York City, then in Boston, and finally in the Maine countryside. Everyone, from The Running Man’s razzle-dazzle host (Colman Domingo), to a vapid young woman whose car he tries to commandeer (Emilia Jones), to the most ruthless of the show’s hunters (Lee Pace in a stretchy khaki mask), wants to see him fall. Ben runs, a lot. He grimaces. He runs some more. The action, messily blocked and shot, is cartoony in an exhausting way. The Running Man is one of those pictures that’s supposed to be fun even as it means something. It’s about the importance of family, but only in the most sentimental way. (Ben’s wife and daughter are introduced briefly at the beginning before quickly being relegated to the symbol pile.) It’s about the horrors of living under an authoritarian regime, where your TV watches you back. It’s set in a world where the powers that be actually want people to starve, suffer, and die. Yet in Wright’s hands, these horrors feel like little more than convenient backdrop material. This is the second time King’s novel—originally published under his pen name Richard Bachman—has been filmed, and if the 1987 version, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, featured more than its share of cheesy faux-futuristic backup dancers in day-glo Spandex, it also had plenty of juice. And for all its synthy goofiness, it still manages to feel more relevant than this new incarnation. When the showrunner in the earlier film, played by Richard Dawson, barks an order to an underling—“Get me the Justice Department—Entertainment Division!”—it’s as if he’d seen straight into our own lawless present. Plus, it’s just a great line.
