'The Running Man' review: Edgar Wright loses his footing in clunky sci-fi remake

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

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I’m not mad; I’m just disappointed.

Those were my thoughts leaving Edgar Wright’s dizzying sci-fi actioner “The Running Man,” a remake of the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film and a second attempt at adapting Stephen King’s novel. Wright, who built his reputation on scrappy, inventive genre mashups like “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz,” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” seems to have misplaced the very qualities that made him a singular filmmaker. The signature rhythm, the playful precision, the tonal control he’s known for are missing. What’s left is a nearly two-and-a-half-hour clunker that never establishes a coherent pulse. It’s goofy without being clever, uninvolving without being insightful, and strangely self-absorbed. Even Glen Powell, one of the few bona fide movie stars of his generation, feels stranded in a film that can’t decide what it wants to be.

Yes, this is a better adaptation than the 1987 version, but that’s a low bar considering the earlier film barely resembled the novel at all. Wright and co-writer Michael Bacall at least attempt to honor the source material. On paper, Wright should be the ideal filmmaker for this world: he knows how to build intricate societal frameworks (“The World’s End”), direct adrenalized action (“Baby Driver”), and craft vivid visual storytelling (“Last Night in Soho”). Yet almost none of that identity appears in “The Running Man.” If you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t know he directed it. 

The movie never settles into a consistent tone, veering between self-serious dystopian warnings and deliriously stupid spectacle. Instead of Wright’s usual kinetic confidence, we get a blender full of half-formed social commentary about surveillance states, media manipulation, and systemic oppression. Powell, meanwhile, is trying to prove his action-hero credentials, but the role of Ben Richards just doesn’t align with his natural strengths. Richards is meant to be a desperate man on the verge of combustion, someone whose rage and circumstances make him dangerous. Powell, with all his charm and effortless likability, never quite sells that internal fracture. It’s one of the rare times his charisma works against him, and the movie doesn’t do much to guide him toward something sharper.

Richards, as presented here, is a father in dire financial straits, unable to find work because of a history of insubordination. His last resort is auditioning for a slate of deadly game shows that pay contestants insultingly little for risking their lives. Josh Brolin’s Dan Killian, the calculating showrunner of the Network, sees Richards as perfect ratings bait: a wisecracking, downtrodden everyman with everything to lose. That’s the exact character the novel understood so well. Wright’s version only brushes against that depth.

As soon as the show begins, the movie hurls Richards into chaos. He’s hunted by a society taught to hate him and crosses paths with various allies and adversaries. William H. Macy appears as an old contact who provides disguises and weapons, and Michael Cera plays a revolutionary spreading underground newsletters designed to take down the Network. Colman Domingo, however, steals the movie as Bobby T, the show’s flamboyant emcee. He’s the only performer who seems to understand the tone Wright thought he was crafting. You wish he narrated everything.

There are flashes where the film nearly clicks, and Powell remains engaging even when miscast. But he was far better utilized in last summer’s “Twisters” and “Hit Man,” where filmmakers understood how to harness his natural magnetism. Here, he’s stuck in a story that keeps trying to reinvent him into something he isn’t.

All of this culminates in a disorganized finale that strips away the novel’s haunting ambiguity in favor of answers, setups, and safe resolutions. The book, published in 1982, still resonates today because it commits to its bleakness and its ideas: the cruelty of spectacle, the exploitation of poverty, the seductive power of authoritarian entertainment.

King’s novel understood oppression not as a backdrop, but as the engine of the entire narrative. Wright’s film gestures toward those themes without ever engaging with them. It wants the credit for depth without doing the digging.

And that’s the real disappointment. The novel gave this adaptation a blueprint that was timely, urgent, and emotionally grounded. Wright and Powell had the ingredients to make something electric. Instead, the film feels like a missed opportunity, unsure of itself and unclear on what made the story compelling in the first place.

Grade: C 

THE RUNNING MAN is now playing in theaters.