What in the Schwarzeneggers were they thinking? some must have been wondering. Other people just love a remake, however inferior (which this most certainly is).
In plot, director Edgar Wright has only taken us a few strides away from the original 1987 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel by Paul Michael Glaser (better known as Starsky to any fan of 1970s cop shows), which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Then, criminals could win their freedom by entering TV game show The Running Man, in which they are hunted by ruthless killers. Here, it’s all about the billion-dollar prize (cue a nice little Easter egg of Arnie’s face printed on the money).
While instead of the state calling the dystopian shots, now it’s the television producers themselves, led by megalomaniac Josh Brolin (looking disturbingly like Jeffrey Epstein). And is that giant spinning red “N” atop the headquarters of the network station a sly little dig at a rather powerful real-life streamer?
In tone, this is all cute wisecracks and a narrative as imaginative as an off-the-shelf algorithm. Wright has done proper funny plenty of times (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) but throwing the buddy antics of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost into a prescient story of a totalitarian world fixated by reality TV and misinformation would never have worked.
So instead we get Glen Powell sliding into Arnie’s onesie as Ben Richards, the lead runner who’s actually a good guy framed (hello, naughty AI) as a baddie. The reason he’s risking it all is to get the cash to pay for meds for his sick daughter.
Besides being a basic everyman hunk, Powell’s only USP is that he’s “very angry!!!”. You’ll see him baretop, pecs and lats glistening as he abseils down a building. And besides one great line about making loving to an illegal immigrant sheep, Powell is mainly fed stock action-flick platitudes such as, “I’m done with playing defence”. The rest of the time he’s just exceedingly cross.
Colman Domingo is the game show’s oily host who should have been way more bombastic than he is (this actor, and we know he can do it, ought to be chewing up every single piece of the TV studio and spitting it over the audience).
Things explode, Powell keeps legging it while trying to work out what “playing offence” might actually entail, and everything rumbles on with the occasional very minor kink in the narrative.
This is far from a trainwreck (good company while chomping through a kilo of popcorn) but don’t run to the cinema.
The Running Man is in cinemas from November 12
