Edgar Wright’s latest film “The Running Man” could be more entertaining in my humble opinion. While its overall result is as slick and competent as you can expect from Wright, the movie does not distinguish itself enough compared to many of those countless dystopian flicks out there, and that is a shame considering the glimpses of rich potentials along its story.

I guess this is probably because the story itself, which is based on the 1982 novel of the same name written by Stephen King under his well-known pseudonym Richard Bachman, is not particularly chilling or refreshing to us at present. When I read King’s novel in 2000, the extreme level of that dystopian reality TV show depicted in the novel felt rather outrageous to me, but that has become far less shocking to me and many others now for many good reasons including the rising vulgarity of numerous reality TV shows out there. After all, we are all pretty much like living in a very big and bad reality TV show especially after that shockingly unbelievable political rise of that orange-faced fascist/racist prick in US who was incidentally the star of a truly cruel and vulgar reality TV show, aren’t we?

Anyway, the adapted screenplay by Wrigth and his co-writer Michael Bacall is mostly faithful to the basic plotline of King’s novel. The hero of the story, an unemployed working-class family man named Ben Richards (Glen Powell), decides to try his luck on reality TV show because his young daughter is very sick and he and his dear wife do not have any money to buy the drug for their ill daughter right now. At first, he simply wants to appear on any kind of reality TV show except “The Running Man”, but, what do you know, he soon finds himself selected as one of the three contestants for the new upcoming season of that infamous reality TV show.

At first, Richards is not so amused by this situation, but then he is persuaded to go along with that selection by Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), the sleazy producer of “The Running Man” who is also one of the top-ranking executives of a very, very, very powerful network company which has dominated over the American society and its citizens for many years as producing “The Running Man” and many other trashy reality TV shows. In the name of more viewership, popularity, and, yes, power, Killian is surely ready to do anything, and he thinks Richards has all the right stuffs for throwing billions of viewers out there into more anger and excitement.

Around the narrative point where Richards are introduced on the stage along with the two other contestants, the movie lays out the rules of their deadly survival game. Exactly 12 hours after they are released right after their introduction time, not only a bunch of company hunters but also the police and the public will pursue after each of them, and they will earn more and more money as they manage to evade and survive day by day, though that is nothing compared to what they will get if they are still alive after 30 days.

As Killian correctly observed, Richards turns out to be quite tough, resourceful, and defiant. Once he gets released, he quickly works on disguising himself with some makeup and a fake identification card. In addition, he also gets some unexpected help from several rebellious persons, who are willing to help him instead of reporting or killing him for getting the bounty promised by Killian and his network company. There are two young brothers who hate the network as much as Richards, and they gladly lead him to an eccentric underground activist who may provide a safe shelter for him.

Needless to say, Richards is reminded again and again of how everything is already fixed for him as well as his two fellow contestants from the very beginning. However, this makes him all the more defiant than before, and we surely get several intense action scenes as he keeps trying to evade the pursuit of those company hunters, who are incidentally led by some menacing masked dude who is also another key figure in “The Running Man”.

While it did a fairly good job of keeping things rolling, the story is also often hampered by a lot of heavy-handed expositions and emphasis. Yes, our hero is surely destined to function as someone to ignite the massive public defiance against the network company, but the movie explains and emphasizes this to us too much and too long. In addition, it understandably makes its finale relatively less bleak compared to the ending of King’s book, but its attempts to lighten up the mood a bit during this part feel rather jarring instead, and that is where the movie comes to lose a considerable portion of its narrative momentum.

Anyway, the main cast members try their best for selling their materials. Glen Powell proves again here in this film that he is an engaging leading man to watch, though he is mostly required to look intense or desperate throughout the film. As the two main villains of the story, Josh Brolin and Colman Domingo are willing to throw themselves into a lot of sleaziness and nastiness, and Domingo chews every moment of his as gleefully as required for our guilty pleasure. In case of several other notable cast members, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, and Katy O’Brian are rather under-utilized on the whole, but Cera impresses us again with another scene-stealing performance of his during this year after his delightful comic acting in Wes Anderon’s “The Phoenician Scheme” (2025).

In conclusion, “The Running Man” is not satisfying enough for recommendation, but I think it shows a bit of improvement compared to the 1987 film of the same name loosely based on King’s novel (The movie makes a little nod to that film via using a bit of the image of the famous leading actor of that film, by the way). Although it does not reach to the cheesy fun of the 1987 film, the movie is not entirely without good elements to enjoy while also showing more skill and competence in comparison, and that can be enough for you if you just want to kill some spare time.