When I got The Running Man (2025) out of the library, it was because I vaguely remembered it was supposed to be good. When I saw director Edgar Wright in the credits, I remembered why.
It stars Glen Powell as an unemployed prole in a dystopian future. He is begging his old boss at. a foundry for his job back. He has brought his sick baby along for sympathy, and because he doesn't have anyone to look after her. His boss tells him that after blowing the whistle on the company for unsafe practices, he's never getting working there again. Powell gets mad, but controls it.
When his wife get home from her job in a hostess bar, Powell tells her about his plan to get enough money for some medicine. He'll go on one of the sadistic (sometimes deadly) gameshows that are now so popular. She reluctantly agrees, but makes him promise not to go on Running Man, the worst of them all.
He goes in for an interview, and they find him the angriest man who has ever applied. Makes him perfect for - guess what? Running Man. In this show, you are hunted for fun by a group of killers, while anyone can earn a bounty by killing you. Producer Josh Brolin tells him how much money he could make for his family for every day he survives, even if he doesn't live for the whole 30 day duration. So he agrees. At least, during the show, his wife and baby will be protected. The company promises that neither they nor anyone else will use them for leverage.
And so he starts running. His plan is to go underground, sticking with the dregs of society. He goes to old buddy William H. Macy, who reluctantly helps him out with new ID and some disguises. He also gives Powell a contact in Bangor ME, well off the beaten track.
Another rule of Running Man is that runners have to send in a ten minute video every day. Powell's are so angry that he is beginning to get a following. The show's host, Colman Domingo, has to deride him as a dangerous, violent "welf" (welfare recipient), with a hooker wife and neglected baby.
Up in ME, he meets up with a Michael Cera, a sort of revolutionary. He knows the hunters are right behind Powell, and hopes they make it, because he has the whole house booby trapped. So we get a little lethal Home Alone-ing.
Powell is doing pretty well - lasting longer than most. So Brolin starts a psychological game, claiming that Powell's family is not safe. Maybe they are hostages, maybe already dead. nit sure what the point of this is. To make him madder? Just to mess with him?
On the whole I enjoyed this, but it was rather generic. There were a few Wrightian touches - like when Powell in disguise is standing in front of an animated wanted poster of himself, looking right and left as the poster does the same in sync. But they are relatively few or at least not noticeable. There are a lot of action scenes, but nothing much new or particularly stylish. Well, maybe Wright was going for a generic action feel. There is also more than a bit of politics, even a touch of One Battle After Another.
So, a fine movie, good entertainment that isn't even that mindless. But maybe my least favorite Edgar Wright.
