Publication Date: 11-21-2025

The Running Man (2025) review

Dir. Edgar Wright

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

With American society seemingly becoming more cruel each and every day, a cultural embrace of rampant dehumanization with folks willing to blame their neighbors over oligarchs who want more for themselves and less for everyone else, and politics play like reality TV only with gravely serious consequences, a concept like The Running Man no longer feels like pure science-fiction. It feels depressingly closer to reality than ever before. Oh, the irony of a movie of about a monolithic TV network that owns and controls all the information the public can access when that movie is literally preceded by a Paramount logo. Was Disney asleep at the wheel for an opportunity at irony?

Based on Stephen King’s novel, Edgar Wright’s Running Man is not a remake of the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger actioneer, but instead a totally separate adaptation in its own right. For a film as grim as this, it’s surprisingly a lot of fun, albeit not in the conventional sense you’d expect from Wright. All of his colorful pop culture affects have been muted and replaced with a drabness that’s so atypical of his style, you’d be forgiven if you forget for long stretches of time that he did indeed direct this. Only a couple of scenes show his trademark flare. More on them later.

We’re dropped into a dystopian hellscape of a United States where the president is merely a figurehead and the real stranglehold on the country is in the hands of an authoritarian media company known as “the Network,” run by the amoral Dan Killian (a menacing Josh Brolin). His empire has taken the old newspaper mantra of “if it bleeds, it leads” to new levels, with a wide variety of competition game shows that often end in the death of the participants while an adoring live-studio and home audience cheers it all on.

Because the masses are so impoverished and desperate, the temptation to audition for these game shows is more popular than it should be. Unemployed and unable to afford medication his extremely sick daughter needs, Ben Richards (Glen Powell) goes against his wife’s (Jayme Lawson) wishes and auditions for The Running Man. It’s a gladiatorial game show where contestants must survive for 30 days while being hunted by Evan McCone (Lee Pace) and his elite team of trackers. The public can get involved (and get paid) by recording contestants’ whereabouts and uploading video to a mobile app, so from the jump, the odds are stacked against those insane enough to participate. Should a contestant survive for the entire month, they’ll be rewarded with generational wealth.

Competing alongside a terribly naïve dolt (Martin Herlihy) and a flamboyant party-girl (Katy O’Brian), Richards appears to be the only one with a serious will to survive. He sees those who try to rat him out as well as those hunting him dead as people who do not want to see him save his daughter’s life. Killian and the Network do not want Richards, or any contestant, to be a sympathetic figure, so they engage in video manipulation to posit each of these individuals as selfish killers cheering on societal destruction.

Supposedly, Wright took Michael Bacall’s original script for the film and radically revised it (though Bacall still has a co-writer credit). That makes The Running Man‘s intensely bleak nature even more surprising. Wright’s style has always been high-energy and slightly off-kilter. Do I need to remind you how fun Baby Driver was, or how the filmmaker made London nights pulsate with such life and rigor in Last Night in Soho? There are flashes of that existing here, most notably in Daniel Ezra’s Bradley, a rebel who decides to aid Richards during the early days of his quest to survive. Bradley films and edits hyper-stylized propaganda videos that speak out against what the Network does by proving how shows like The Running Man are staged. These videos are what we expect from Wright. Too often does that kind of lively, quasi-manic energy reveal itself amidst all the gloom.

That being said, Wright writes the hell out of an absurd number of quality supporting characters like Ezra’s Bradley. The best among them is Michael Cera, who runs an underground anarchist newspaper and harbors rage over the death of his father. Cera’s character is strong enough for its own spinoff, and the 15-ish minutes we spend with him are an absolute riot. His stately home, which he shares with his mostly deaf, whacko mother, is rigged in a way that would make John Kramer grin.

Brolin is stupendous as a reprehensible TV executive; another feather in his cap after Weapons in what has been a banner year for the veteran actor. Colman Domingo is engaging as the cartoonish host of The Running Man; a role Eddie Murphy could’ve crushed if he wasn’t so busy binging Ridiculousness. William H. Macy’s cameo is rife with world-weary emotion as he plays a character who can get you any weapon, disguise, or phony ID, yet doesn’t seem too proud of his line of work. Emilia Jones — who shined in the Oscar-winning CODA in 2021 — is a late-game addition, who also has a purpose as her character’s perception of the Network’s game shows is changed on a dime upon meeting Richards.

As strange as it is to say, the soul who feels out of place in The Running Man is Glen Powell. As admirable as his desire is to act against type, the unfortunate fact is that Powell’s superpower — his undeniable charisma — is traded for a brooding, angry personality that does not fit the blossoming star. This is a role that needed someone with more natural on-screen angst, like Kyle Gallner or the perpetually underrated Dane DeHaan. When everyone around him is so sharp, it’s unnatural and sort of unbelievable to see Powell appear so miscast.

Despite running (pun intended) for over two hours, The Running Man maintains a breakneck pace that helps iron out some of its plot-holes and make you feel the urgency and constant state of fear in which Richards operates. The final 15 minutes is as brazen as it is believable, especially when we just witnessed the Robin Hoodization of Luigi Mangione and will likely see that level of support increase once the trial officially begins. Wright’s adaptation of King’s novel might not be on-par with his own creative output, but it’s solid and sturdy for what it is, bolstered heavily by a litany of memorable supporting players.

Starring: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, and Sean Hayes. Directed by: Edgar Wright.