I’ve been a fan of Edgar Wright’s kinetic, music-driven approach to filmmaking since Shaun of the Dead, and over the past few years, Glen Powell has emerged as one of our most reliably charismatic screen presences. So when Paramount announced the pair would be teaming up for a fresh adaptation of Stephen King’s dystopian thriller The Running Man, my expectations were high. The 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger version had leaned into cartoonish spectacle (and far away from its source material), but Wright seemed poised to deliver something closer to King’s grimmer vision, a politically charged action thriller with genuine bite.
The pieces were certainly in place. Wright has proven his ability to stage propulsive action sequences across multiple genres. Powell demonstrated remarkable range in Richard Linklater’s criminally underseen Hit Man, playing a nebbishy philosophy professor who transforms into various undercover personas with chameleon-like ease. And King’s source material (originally published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym) offered a prescient critique of media manipulation, corporate consolidation, and authoritarian creep that feels even more relevant in 2025 than it did in 1982.
So why does The Running Man feel like watching all the right ingredients get tossed into a blender without anyone checking the settings?
The setup adheres closely to King’s novel: Ben Richards (Powell) is a perpetually unemployed hothead who can’t keep a job because he keeps doing inconvenient things, like saving his coworkers from industrial accidents or having conversations with union representative. With his infant daughter sick and medicine prohibitively expensive, Ben makes the desperate decision to audition for The Network’s violent game shows. He ends up selected for “The Running Man,” where contestants must survive for 30 days while being hunted by a team of government-sanctioned killers. The show dominates national broadcasting, feeding a population too distracted by spectacle to recognize how thoroughly they’ve been screwed.
Powell handles the physical demands with the sort of commitment you’d expect from someone who spent months training with Tom Cruise. He sprints, he sweats, and he gamely throws himself into brutal combat. But there’s a fundamental miscasting issue that undermines everything: Powell’s innate charm makes it nearly impossible to buy him as the rage-fueled antihero the story requires. There’s an early sequence where Ben interviews for various Network game shows, and he’s supposed to radiate barely contained fury — the sort of guy who’s one bad interaction away from violence. Instead, Powell’s responses feel mannered, like he’s playing at anger rather than truly embodying it. His confrontations with Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), the sleazy Network executive who’s systematically destroyed Ben’s life, lack the emotional weight they desperately need. Ben’s rage should be boiling over; instead, it’s perpetually simmering.
The supporting cast fares considerably better. Colman Domingo devours every second of screen time as Bobby T., the host of “The Running Man,” delivering showmanship and sadism in equal measure as he whips studio audiences and home viewers into bloodthirsty frenzies. Josh Brolin’s corporate string-puller is underwritten and hews close to established archetypes, but he’s such a supremely watchable actor that he elevates every scene through sheer presence. The film’s secret weapon, though, is Michael Cera as Elton, a gleefully unhinged revolutionary who helps Ben evade the hunters. When a kill squad descends on Elton’s countryside home, Cera orchestrates a mini-battle that plays like Home Alone reimagined by someone with access to military-grade weaponry, and it’s one of the film’s unqualified highlights.
Then the third act arrives, and things begin to fall apart.
The pacing, which had been steadily building momentum, suddenly lurches into a series of abrupt stops and starts. Character motivations — particularly those of the film’s primary villains — become inconsistent and illogical. The editing feels hacked to pieces, as though crucial connective tissue ended up on the cutting room floor, and the conclusion arrives so abruptly that it robs the film of any intended emotional payoff.
Even more disappointing is how thoroughly The Running Man fails to offer fresh insights into its themes. The critique of corporate media manipulation, surveillance culture, and authoritarian control feels surface-level and obvious. I had hoped Wright might achieve something along the lines of the savage satire Paul Verhoeven mined in Robocop, but this version of The Running Man comes nowhere close. No new ground is broken, and no fresh ideas are conveyed.
Curiously, this is the second Stephen King/Richard Bachman adaptation to arrive in 2025, following Francis Lawrence’s devastating The Long Walk. Both deal with grim dystopian futures and citizens sacrificed for entertainment, but where Lawrence’s film felt like a fully realized vision with something genuine to say, The Running Man feels like a diluted version of its own ambitions. The 1987 Schwarzenegger adaptation may have been campy as all hell, but I would argue that it had a much stronger sense of identity.
The Running Man offers enough kinetic entertainment in its first two acts to keep things watchable, and fans of Wright’s approach to action will find moments to appreciate. But the script buckles under scrutiny, and the film’s flaws become more apparent upon reflection. It’s decent enough for a group night out, but it certainly doesn’t rank among Wright’s best work. As I mentioned at the top of this piece, all the right pieces were there. They just never connected.