Directed by Paul Michael Glaser | Written by Steven E. de Souza, from the Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) novel | 101 min | ▲▲ | Netflix
It’s deeply weird how much Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Running Man reminds me of One Battle After Another. It’s not the science fiction elements as much as the reality TV and police state tropes that feel so relevant. I never would’ve expected this picture, of all of Arnold’s 1980s output, would be the prophetic one, but then everything old is new again: this week we’re getting a new version of The Running Man from Edgar Wright, and we’ve already had another frighteningly dystopic-but-telling King/Bachman adaptation this year, The Long Walk.
This one came out after Predator, but before Total Recall, and lacks the kinetic punch of John McTiernan’s franchise-starter or Paul Verhoeven’s ultra-violent Martian fantasy. This is made under the aegis of actor-turned-director “Starsky” Glaser, who has a less impressive resume. That said, it does import many of Stephen King’s ideas, some of which are still speaking to us in a way we can easily understand. It might be the first science-fiction movie to present the idea of digital deep fakes on video.
Mostly, it’s in conversation with the era it’s made, as is all sci-fi. Here we’ve got trash TV, which was already in play with Morton Downey Jr and Jerry Springer, combined with the growing popularity of the NFL.
Schwarzenegger is Ben Richards — at this point in his career he’s a genre unto himself and they don’t even try to explain the Austrian accent. In this future totalitarian America he’s a military pilot who refuses to fire on an unarmed group of food rioters. He’s thrown into prison with a couple of his military buddies (hey, Yaphet Kotto!) where they’re forced to wear explosive collars — if they try and escape they lose their heads. Nonetheless they escape, but find themselves press ganged into a televised death game, and in a bit of genius casting it’s presented by Richard Dawson, longtime host of The Family Feud.
The show is The Running Man, where criminals get hunted by colourful, violent goons called Stalkers through an urban wasteland — all of which looks like bad, poorly lit sets. Arnie’s buddies Jim Brown and Jesse Ventura have choice supporting roles, with weird cameos from Dweezil Zappa and Mick Fleetwood in terrible old-man make-up. One of the few women with lines of dialogue is Maria Conchita Alonso as someone who Ben Richards kidnaps and brutalizes when it suits him, but eventually she comes to see he’s been set up by the government — and maybe he’s not such a bad guy.
It’s hard to undersell how cheap this movie looks — especially given the broad futuristic elements. There’s a Stalker called Dynamo lit up with Lite-Bright pegs, fer chrissakes, it’s incredibly cheesy. Another problem is the deeply dull score — the best fantasy and action entertainments of the ’80s all had memorable scores. This isn’t one of them.
I think most of us these days are tired of the remakes and legasequels based on existing material from the 1980s and ’90s — and yet we’re getting another Gremlins flick — but the good news is Wright doesn’t have a high bar to clear for his new movie.
