Edgard Wright's film of Richard Bachman's THE RUNNING MAN (2025)

So, this is.... Very broad (hey, AMERICANOS  team, where you at? Or Fun Twinks eaters!) very sharp, very much turning an Exploitation Big Dumb Hollywood Action Movie Thriller Funhouse mirror on us, and is it the Edgar Wright version of this book.  OH YEAH YEAAAAAHHHHH THE CLOCK STARTS NOW ON SPOILERS! 

This is one of those takes I don't think many (or any) other film geeks or people who watch a lot of movies will have - certainly not the general public who will barely know this name if at all - but I thought of Larry Cohen watching this production of Running Man. 

.... Or I should say if any studio head decided to suddenly give the writer and director of The Stuff and The Ambulance buckets of money to plan and execute a vision of America in 2025 that is equally right now and years from now (really it is here as much as it is "ahead" in the future - and yes I am the millionth one to point out the Bachman book was set this year dont @ me).  Cohen was very much a filmmaker who had no qualms about stretching characters and ideas into some preposterous places, where it is still ridiculous but you can't stop watching.  

Maybe that won't seem tonally what this is, but that was what I read into the highly exaggerated characterizations around the Ben Richards character; he, as played by a very capable Glenn Powell (showing his total bonafides as an action star who can do the pissed off scenes as convincingly as much ss the more smart-ass snd Hiding in Costumes stuff, the Blind Priest is the highlight of course), is the rock around where everyone else, chiefly Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo (perfect), Michael Cera, in his own cool way Lee Pace and for a few all too brief minutes Sandra Dickinson, can be these cartoon versions of reality while still feeling real enough for this kind of movie.

I dug the movie, in other words, and putting aside my pet film auteurist kind of thoughts on where he may have borrowed from tonally, I could still feel Wright's energy and passion for filmmaking and in making us always aware of what a character is seeing and doing and how to make big-splashy comic book personalities (from Scott Pilgrim, no way).  I also dug how it gets you up to speed quickly on its world-building and expects you to keep up.

I have seen the criticism that this is tonally all over the place. I found it more consistent than not, where suspense, occasional pathos and absurd humor (Hot Dog truck) mixed well, until around the third act - the Amelia Williams character is a step too far as much as trying to hammer the point from the Poors to the Riches what things really are like (if she was there for just a few minutes, fine, but there for too long).  There are also some performances, like that one young kid of the guy who helps Ben out, that fall flat. 

I am even fine with some of the major changes from the book to the film near that ending, though (and this is why I marked this a Spoiler Hot Take here), it is too incredulous/unbelievable that Richards Lives after that plane crash, and so those final few minutes are a little too neatly-tied up in a bow so that keeps it from being a bit more substantive leaving the theater in terms of message.

But before Wright and company bite off a little more than they can chew as far as that, the movie manages to be a proverbial Ride, where it has enough grim and depressing elements baked in but it doesn't have to make that the focal point.  The action is wonderfully graphic and messy, and there is enough to guess about who may do what next to Ben that when turns come in the story it works (which of course includes objectifying Powell in a towel - hey, that rhymes!)

Ultimately, it is a curious thing because I think this is quite faithful to the (surely greater) book in terms of events (until, again, that ending), but it also is a thoroughly entertaining and rollicking anti-establishment adventure full of blood and murder and other fun things. I'm even tempted to call this a sensational "Turn Off Your Brain and Enjoy" kind of Hollywood piece of Popcorn, even as I don't like the idea of turning my brain off most of the time - or, to put it this way, I'd rather have it from someone with a real command of their craft than a hack (again, I think that is evident in the things about the Dystopia that are exagerrated but only by enough for us to get).

(PS: who could have made a completely faithful adaptation?  Um... actually, John Carpenter might have done even better on this King than Christine, and Kurt Russell as Ben Richards was who I pictured reading it.  I wrote a review of the book here by the way).