Glen Powell's The Running Man seriously runs out of steam
CBC
There is a rage in Edgar Wright’s abysmally bizarre The Running Man. Or at least, there should be. There is in his lead character: Ben Richards (Glen Powell), an out-of-work labourer in a future America surveillance state where reality television and “New Dollars” are the coin of the realm.
Because Ben can’t catch a break. Fired for defiantly attempting to save his coworkers from an on-the-job disaster, Ben is chronically unemployed — bad news for his overworked wife (Jayme Lawson) and sickly infant daughter in serious need of medicine.
There's only one problem: Ben, frequently described as the angriest man in the world, is in serious need of cash. So, leaving his ratty neighbourhood of Slumside, he finds his way to the affluent side of Co-op City, base of operations for the pseudo-governmental broadcast company Freevee.
Beaming out to nearly every citizen on TVs that, we’re chillingly informed, watch you back, Freevee is sort of like if Spike TV was elected president. By operating a series of game shows that are dubiously ethical at best, Freevee head Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) lives like a king in this retrofuturistic hellscape.
His favourite production is their big earner; the namesake Running Man show he thinks Ben would be just perfect for. A reality tv program whose rules break down simply enough for even the most casual viewer.
As a contestant, just forfeit your ID and other identification markers that allow you to do everything from book a hotel room to buy a bus ticket. Then try to evade and survive the “hunters” hot on your trail for thirty days, armed with sniper rifles, shotguns, switchblades — and a serious hunger for blood.
Oh yeah, and try not to get recognized by the general populace desperate to see you punished for your perceived failures as a member of society. That, to them, would be infinitely more entertaining than seeing the winner's family get a $1 billion reward, should he somehow manage to survive.
As a setup, it is instantly identifiable; a high concept, television-obsessed dystopia that ticks all the absurdly named, ridiculously costumed boxes of satirical sci-fi.
And the best thing this update to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 Running Man has going for it is its pessimism and absurd creativity; at times lighthearted, and other times cuttingly ironic.
Squint, and you just might be able to imagine that Colman Domingo’s turn as violently voyeuristic TV host Bobby T is an homage to Chris Tucker’s Ruby Rhod in The Fifth Element.
But this is in the face of poor storytelling techniques and unlikeable, if not unintelligibly obscure characters. It is a simultaneously reductive and out-of-date takedown of the surveillance state, and a cynical (though not inaccurate) shot across the bow of modern America.
It is a film mixed with a plot so scattered and messy, Ben's friends and family — ostensibly the motivating force behind all his actions — disappear into the background with a quickness and regularity that suggests they never even mattered at all.
It is a film that doesn't even bother to introduce one major character until almost the last 15 minutes, but without whom the film would not be able to make its almost painfully shallow point. A film that, like the recent Tron revival, is dressed up in the clothing of futuristic cultural commentary, but removes itself so completely from the original point of its respective franchise that it no longer operates as a critique of anything at all.
To be fair, all of this is framing some genuinely well-done action. Wright, a consummate overstimulation expert, clearly still has all the action-choreography tricks Scott Pilgrim taught him burning a hole in his pocket.
