In a dystopian future where corporations run virtually everything, a man desperate for money to save his family joins a gameshow that involves being pursued by professional hunters, mainstream hooligans and even the dregs of society, for cash prizes.
Everybody knows the OG Running Man, that insane 80’s movie based off a novel by Richard Bachman aka Stephen King starring The Arnold, in a futuristic dystopian America where a wrongfully accused cop is forced to join a gameshow where convicts called Runners are forced to battle killers for their freedom. Whew! And while the 80’s movie differs quite a bit from the novel on which it’s based, the same themes of futuristic dystopia, corporate greed, and slaughter as entertainment for the masses, remain quite prevalent. Same too with this new film, which is actually a fair bit closer to the book, so be sure your vaccines are up to date you ungrateful heathens, and let’s get into this!
So Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is a man on the lower rungs of collective society, a man who seems to have a bit of a hero complex, who doesn’t take well to following orders at all really, a man who can’t hold down a job because the corporate overlords don’t take kindly to anyone who protests “unfair treatment”. And thus, especially when his overworked wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson) has to take on more less-than-stellar mini-jobs at the club where she works because their daughter Cathy (Alyssa and Sienna Benn) has come down with the flu, Ben is an angry man. Apparently Ben is old enough to remember when the flu was something that most people in society could survive, when simple drugs to treat flu symptoms were actually affordable and not a rich persons societal status symbol. But Ben is also a realist, and after getting bounced from yet another purportedly respectable job, he takes his lottery-like research from Free-vee watching while caring for sickly Cathy with him to try out for a gameshow at one of the corporate hubs.
There Ben joins a whole bunch of rounds of testing and training, ostensibly for the various Free-vee gameshows he could join, but we all know it was kind of inevitable that Ben, a prime specimen of humanity with tons of stamina and enough anger in him to fuel a rage-win, would end up being “selected” to join The Running Man. His fellow chosen are Tim Jansky (Martin Herlihy), the Napolean Dynamite-like first sacrifice to the corporate show gods, and Jenny Laughlin (Katy O’Brian), bemused and desperate but fully aware she’s far more likely to get her brains splashed across a scoreboard than win the contest, and so she’s living it up while she’s still alive!
Now clad in the iconic red Running Man jumpsuit and sneakers, one last explanatory phone call to his wife and boy did she take the news surprisingly well, it’s time to briefly meet the corporate giant in charge of the show, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin). And Killian claims he wants Richards to go all the way, to entertain with his giddy bloodshed-y deaths while millions of the masses watch, Ben might even make it as far as 29 days, the record held by the almost-winner of the very first season of the show. Whatever happened to that guy? Well anyway. After a pep talk from Killian, all three of our contestants are thrust before the studio audience and the greatest MC in the world, Host of the show and narrator of countless contestant deaths, Bobby T (Colman Domingo)! The rules are explained, basically survive a month and you win a whole bunch of New-Dollars (yes the man featured on the New-Money is in fact Arnold Schwarzenegger), make and mail off a 10-minute VHS tape every day as a proof of life kind of thing, and just in general run your ass off, sucker!
Out in the wild, Richards goes for help to various old friends of his, most notably Molie (William H. Macy), an old pal who fixes electronics and in general manages to live outside the corporate-mandated society, who genuinely does want to help Richards and only gets himself tortured and executed by the gameshow hunters for it. Then there’s Bradley Throckmorton (Daniel Ezra), aka The Apostle, the rebellious online anonymous personality determined to expose the corporate corruption rampant in Running Man. After more than one daring escape that led to the deaths of gameshow hunters and tattle-telling bystanders, Richards comes face to face with the last lead hunter left, one Evan McCone (Lee Pace), and his own determination to not be overshadowed and replaced by this rage-fueled upstart on the show.
In the end, after countless attempts on his life from professionals and amateurs both, Ben rises like a phoenix from the ashes, to confront Killian directly. Where it all began, on the introductory stage of The Running Man, surrounded by an audience screaming for bloodshed, and like the ancient Roman coliseums, no-one really gives a damn who the blood, slaughter, and eventual death comes from.
Cheer for your favorite contestant, in The Running Man 2025, in theaters now!
Reviewed by Alicia Glass