Directed by Edgar Wright | Written by Wright and Michael Bacall, based on the Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) novel | 133 min | ▲▲1/2 | In Cinemas

This movie is both better than expected and yet not as good as was hoped.

Compared to the previous work of the wildly talented British filmmaker Edgar Wright, including the one co-written with Michael Bacall, there’s something missing from this adaptation. It’s recognizably a Wright effort, clear in the zippy pace, camerawork and rapid-fire editing — he’s aiming for the punchy and grotesque Paul Verhoeven tone of movies like Robocop and Total Recall rather than the bland Arnold Schwarzenegger edition of this story. The Running Man (2025) is certainly better than the 1987 version, but it’s nowhere near as brilliant as we’ve come to expect from this filmmaker.

Is that because he was brought on as a director-for-hire for this big Hollywood picture? He’s worked in Hollywood before and it went pretty well but you got the sense Baby Driver was more of a passion project than this is. Wright has delivered an entertaining action blockbuster that could’ve been a whole lot more memorable.

Ben Richards (Glen Powell playing it as an odd combo of angry and bro-y) is a working class guy trying to earn enough money in a dystopic alternative 2025 to buy meds for his sick kid and support his wife, Sheila (Jayme Lawson). He’s been fired from a number of gigs because he’s so frustrated by The System that keeps him down, but that rage makes him a great contestant when, desperate, he goes to The Network that broadcasts trashy and violent reality TV shows on the universal system, FreeVee. He auditions, which involves doing a lot of American Gladiator-esque stunts, and lands the biggest, most dangerous of the game shows — the titular Running Man.

If he can avoid getting killed over 30 days he’ll earn a billion new dollars, which will make him massively wealthy. But that’s not likely, with a team of deadly assassins called the Hunters after him (and two others), led by the masked man Evan McCone (Lee Pace), with show host Bobby T (Colman Domingo) stoking the audience with propaganda and outright lies, and show producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin wearing a set of fake chompers looking a lot like Timothy Olyphant) pulling the strings.

But Ben Richards does find unexpected help from various civilians as he tries to stay one step ahead of the squads of killers. This while he’s having to record vlogs and mail them to the show so they can incorporate his thoughts in their daily broadcasts, though Ben quickly comes to understand that the show will fake videos to twist the narrative for more ratings.

And here’s the thing — there’s a lot of opportunity to make this material really crush it right now, the wealth of satiric meat on this tale is the size of a water buffalo. There’s also a genuine irony that’s hard to ignore — this is a Paramount picture, the studio that paid Trump $16 million to settle the 60 Minutes lawsuit and is looking to acquire Warner Bros. Hard to imagine a more real world example of the villainous network depicted in this film than the one producing it. And this from a filmmaker who bailed on a Marvel movie mid-prep because he didn’t want to compromise on his vision?

But Wright’s passion for doing a movie like they did in the 1980s has made this adaptation feel a lot less cutting in 2025 than, say, that other King/Bachman adaptation this year, The Long Walk. How is it that all the screens are all on walls and not in everyone’s hands, or maybe even in their heads? Why is it that Ben has to mail his vlogs away (using cute drone mailboxes) rather than sending them electronically? And how is it the show isn’t tracking Ben using the digital bracelet on his wrist? That would seem like an obvious cheat. We do get nods to modern tech — like self-driving cars — but also a lot of weirdly anachronistic futurism.

We also get a lot of soft-pedalled action. This is R-Rated material, you can tell from all the swears, so why isn’t the totalitarian brutality of the corporate overlords more… brutal? It would’ve brought more jeopardy to all of this to see the bloody costs of extreme violence instead of keeping much of it at an arms length. It also could’ve been a whole lot funnier — Powell is no comedian, but the script isn’t helping him, or us, with its distinct lack of zingers.

The film also struggles with pacing — decisions were clearly made for the sake of locomotion rather than character. A civilian is introduced in the last act (played by the otherwise solid Emilia Jones) who we barely get to know but who plays an important part in the last set-piece. It would’ve been easy to give her character just a few moments to manifest when she shows up, or even introduce her earlier on as part of the audience for the TV show, but The Running Man is too busy sprinting to its somewhat unsatisfying destination to give us that.

We do get some delightful Wright in-jokes — a few moxie-fuelled Maine gags for those who know Stephen King’s home state, a chucklesome Kardashian-like TV series we check in on occasionally called The Americanos, and Josh Brolin’s father James is on-screen when his 1972 movie Skyjacked is briefly shown on a monitor. And we get a couple of terrific needle drops, like the chase through Michael Cera’s booby-trapped house to the Rolling Stones’ “Heartbreaker.”

But these tastes of Wright’s talent and care to detail make this feel like a missed opportunity for something genuinely subversive. As it is, The Running Man is just a good time.