By 
Stephen King is certainly having a year. The master of horror has had not one, but three of his works adapted for the big screen and not one of them out-and-out horror. Firstly there was ‘The Life of Chuck,’ followed most recently by ‘The Long Walk’ and this week sees ‘The Running Man’ make a return to cinemas (not the Arnie one).
Helmed by Edgar Wright, this adaptation cleves closer to the source material. This time Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is a husband and father living with his family in a totalitarian America. Blacklisted from government work, Richards’s child is sick so he goes to the games network building in an attempt to win money. Unwittingly, Richards gets entered into The Running Man, a game where three supposed ne’er-do-well’s (in this case Katy O’Brian’s Laughlin and Martin Herilhy’s Jansky) have to survive in the world for 30 days while being hunted by the public and trained killers, helmed by McCone (Lee Pace). If they survive, they win one billion new American dollars.
Anyone with fond(ish) memories of the 1987 version will find this new adaptation a significant upgrade. Kept is the idea of the game itself but gone are the cartpoonish villains, silly costumes, wry quips and the ‘one setting’ use. Wright locates the film in the grimy, dirty and unfair world of Co-Op City where the have-nots live in grey boxes in huge highrises, something reminiscent of The Matrix’s Zion or Blade Runner; a place where those desperate for cash will literally die for it.
Wasting little time, the film quickly introduces us to slimy TV producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin on cracking form) who manipulates Ben into signing up for the show and, just as quickly puts him in front of the baying crowd, egged on by host Bobby ‘T’ (Colman Domingo, also having a ball) before literally being thrown to the wolves; the longer they remain hidden, the more the contestants win.
Wright does a great job mixing action sequences with the novel’s timely themes of class struggle, media manipulation AKA ‘fake news’, the unfair distribution of resources and the commodification of human life. This happens through dialogue and a cadre of characters including Daniel Ezra’s downtrodden fixer, Michael Cera’s rebel and Emilia Jones’s hostage. It’s a slickly-pulled together package with charisma magnet Powell at its centre; a good man who just wants to keep his child from being sick. If I have a problem with him its that we never really get the idea that he’s just an ordinary bloke; theres something Bourne-esque about the character; he has the anger of a downtrodden man but never the desperation. Also, Powell forgets to rely on his own acting chops and falls into a Tom Cruise impression in terms of mannerisms and speech patterns on more than one occasion.
There’s also a great deal of humour through the use of Ezra’s videos raging against the machine, a nice-if-unexpected nod to Arnie, Cera’s and Powell’s performances. The ending, which does deviate from the novel, goes full-on action before reaching a lovely satisfying ending.
The most fun King adaptation of 2025, ‘The Running Man’ is a welcome a change from the mysticism of ‘Chuck’ and sheer depressive nature of ‘Walk’ and has legs to run with the best of 2025.
