‘The Running Man’ is a stylistically generic trot through dystopia

“Running Man”
R | 133 minutes
Director: Edgar Wright
Writers: Stephen King, Michael Bacall, Edgar Wright
Stars: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo

A director’s unique voice is the most powerful asset. It is the authorial stamp, the stylistic flair that transforms a mere story into a distinct experience. That is what makes Edgar Wright’s 2025 remake of “The Running Man” such a profound disappointment.

On paper, the pairing of Wright’s hyper-kinetic style with Stephen King’s prescient dystopian novel seemed inspiring. On the screen, the film is a bafflingly pedestrian affair, a project where the directorial spark has been entirely sanded off, leaving behind a competently made but utterly generic shell that fails to justify its own existence.

In a future where the economy has collapsed and a mega media conglomerate known as the Network holds sway, Ben Richards (Glen Powell), desperate for money by any means, volunteers for a deadly game show. To save his sick daughter and financially ruined family, he must survive 30 days as a “Runner,” hunted by both professional assassins known as “Hunters” and a bloodthirsty public incentivized to turn him in. 

The story shuffles in side character after side character to provide advice and life-saving acts that keep Ben in the competition. Unfortunately, it is done with no clear connections, and motivations aren’t satisfyingly unexplained. It is as if a whole reel of exposition was removed, resulting in a confusing mess, especially in the third act where new characters are introduced far too late. 

The most glaring failure is the film’s hollow political core. It is a story primed for sharp social satire and visceral tension, and Wright’s capable hand was a great choice, but this film only flirts with these ideas rather than any kind of focused critique. It whimpers about an unfair world, offering fleeting glimpses of underground resistance and media manipulation, but it never builds a coherent worldview. The politics feels tacked on, more like a random call for social relevance rather than baked into the narrative. 

The burden of carrying this shaky foundation falls heavily on Glen Powell. While he is clearly giving it his all, the performance often misses the mark. He is dialed to a hundred from the start, shouting, sweating and swearing his way through scenes that require nuance. Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic, larger-than-life portrayal in the 1987 version, Powell’s Ben Richards strives for an everyman quality, but the script and his own choices prevent him from achieving the necessary depth. He feels like a theater kid lost in this shuffle in a big boy role, lacking the ego that defines a true 1980s action star. 

Most of the film’s other cast members do not fare much better with the likes of Josh Brolin, William H. Macey and Lee Pace getting little to work with while Colman Domingo as the over-the-top game show host Bobby T and Michael Cera as conspiracy nut Elton Perrakis are the only performers who were really allowed to, or really wanted to, bring the fun to an otherwise mostly po-faced affair.

This is where a comparison to the 1987 “Running Man,” or, perhaps more specifically, Paul Verhoeven’s satires like “RoboCop” or “Total Recall” becomes inevitable — and damning. Verhoeven understood that the fascistic, corporate worlds needed to be built with clockwork precision, their absurdity and violence rendered in a style that was both exuberant and biting. Wright’s world, by contrast, lacks this juice entirely. The dystopia is bland, and the promised satire never moves beyond very on-the-nose surface-level observations.

To be fair, the film is not a total disaster. When it focuses on straightforward action, it works. The chases and fights are clearly shot with a solid sense of impact. A high-rise escape sequence and a bizarre, memorable detour involving a conspiracy theorist played by Michael Cera provide fleeting moments of entertainment. 

But, competence is a low bar for a filmmaker of Wright’s caliber. “The Running Man” felt like the cinematic equivalent of a contract obligation. It is a film that understands the power of its concept but possesses none of the courage or creativity to fully realize it. Wright’s signature touches — the whip-smart editing, the visual puns, the dynamic camera work and iconic soundscapes — are conspicuously absent. If his name wasn’t on the poster, you would never guess this is an Edgar Wright film. By the time the climax devolves into a generic fight on an airplane and rushes to an unsatisfying conclusion, any initial promise has long evaporated. 

As a random action flick, it is watchable. As an Edgar Wright movie, it is a major creative misstep. ♦