"The Running Man" - Edgar Wright's Biggest, But Not His Best

[the following review is spoiler-free]

My relationship with Edgar Wright has unfortunately soured just a tad in recent years. I grew up on the first two films in the famous Cornetto Trilogy, and when Baby Driver came out it was the coolest movie of all time as far as my 14 year old self was concerned. However, upon revisiting his filmography these past few weeks, my most general complaint that I can lodge towards his work is that it often seems like he loves his favorite movies so much that he can often forget that he’s trying to make his own.

Aside from the little looks we got in the trailer of Colman Domingo absolutely bodying his time, I was the opposite of impressed by the trailers for The Running Man. I had this sinking feeling in my stomach as I sat down to watch the film that if this wound up being a miss, that it would potentially be my final nail in the coffin for modern Edgar Wright. Thankfully however, I found quite a lot to like about his newest film, despite its undeniable setbacks. 

The remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger 80s cult classic now stars Glen Powell as a working class father who enters into the deadly game of The Running Man to try and win money to treat his daughter’s illness. Where he must survive thirty days while everyone in the country is trying to murder him.

As far as the direction is concerned, the people that are complaining that this doesn’t elicit the style of your typical Edgar Wright film, or that they may not have been able to tell that it was him if they didn’t already know…are mostly correct. But that doesn’t mean there’s much of anything wrong with how the film is directed, either. It’s certainly a departure from what we’re used to with Wright, but for the most part the action is fluidly staged, the camera is still moving quite a bit, and the actors are firing on all cylinders. 

There’s going to be a ton of talk about how Glen Powell spends essentially the entire movie "Tom Cruise-maxxing", as his actual running resembles Cruise’s to a T, but if there was any doubt about the man’s ability to lead an action blockbuster, this completely squashes it. His energy is totally electric from the opening scene, and it seems as if it compounds as the film progresses. He’s in a perpetual state of screaming, running, flexing, punching, or all of the above at the same time throughout the runtime, and it’s an admirable effort to say the least. 

The ensemble of a supporting cast more than holds their own as well, with Michael Cera and Colman Domingo being the standouts in that front. There is a subplot that arises towards the end of the second act involving Emilia Jones that isn’t as interesting as the rest of the characters that Powell runs into throughout the film, but for the thematic purpose it serves, it still feels mostly earned. 

For a film about a country-wide manhunt, the scale of it all still remains relatively contained… until it's not. While the action set pieces themselves are grandiose, loud and have tons of explosions, there is a gritty sense of realism to the vast majority of them in the first two acts. Once that subplot with Emilia Jones starts to get going towards the end, that’s when the film gets a lot bigger. I’ve already seen people take issue with the third act, as usual with Wright’s movies, for getting both too big for its britches, and ultimately not having much to say. I half agree with both of those statements. 

There comes a moment in the third act where it seems like in an effort to keep the audience guessing, and consistently raise the stakes, Wright and his crew write themselves into an impossible corner. While the film is a tried and true dystopian action popcorn flick, the more grounded realism is undeniably cast aside in the final twenty minutes, with one decision in particular being notably nonsensical. But to tell you the truth I really didn’t mind it all that much. I get why people may be put off by it, but in my mind it’s more in line with the themes of the film than people are giving it credit for. The third act of this movie is going to make or break The Running Man for a lot of viewers.

Also in regards to the film’s messaging: it lost me and won me back about five different times throughout the last thirty minutes. There is a moment where it feels as if the film is going to lean into some really compelling ambiguities…and then it just doesn’t. That element did irk me quite a bit on the initial viewing, but after sitting with it for a few days, I think the film is getting at something not dissimilar to films this year like One Battle After Another, or even Superman. Kind of an insane double bill to line up alongside this, and I would certainly argue that those films are much more refined in their thematic deliveries, but at its core, The Running Man remains relatively hopeful for the future. As long as we don’t royally screw things up. There is that intellectually cynical side of me that softly hoped for this to lean more into the Orwellian potential of the story, but also I get enough of that just scrolling Twitter nowadays, so I’m perfectly fine with some dumb fun.