Edgar Wright's "The Running Man" arrives with uncanny, almost uncomfortable timeliness. Stephen King wrote the novel in 1982 under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, setting it in 2025—a future where economic collapse has turned America totalitarian, reality television has become blood sport, and the government keeps citizens too furious with each other to recognize their common enemy. Sound familiar? Wright's adaptation, co-written with Michael Bacall, began shooting mere hours before the 2024 election polls opened, and while dystopian films have become Hollywood's comfort zone lately, this Action Thriller pulses with a rage and frustration that feels less like manufactured entertainment and more like cathartic scream therapy for our current moment. This is a far cry from the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger camp-fest that kept the title but discarded King's darker vision. Glen Powell stars as Ben Richards, a blacklisted working-class father who enters "The Running Man"—America's deadliest game show where contestants must survive 30 days while hunted by professional killers and a bloodthirsty public—to win the billion-dollar prize that could save his sick daughter. What Wright has crafted is both closer to King's source material and a Sci-Fi Adventure that attempts to blend biting satire with genuine emotional stakes, Paul Verhoeven-style social commentary with Edgar Wright kinetic spectacle. The result from Paramount Skydance is a riveting, propulsive, impeccably crafted entertainment that never quite reconciles its competing impulses—a film caught between the novel's bleak nihilism and Hollywood's need for hope, between razor-sharp critique and crowd-pleasing thrills. This 2025 Movie works brilliantly as pure adrenaline-fueled escapism, less successfully as the biting satire it occasionally aspires to be, but remains one of the year's most purely entertaining blockbusters.
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Director: Edgar WrightWriters: Edgar Wright, Michael Bacall
Cast: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Katy O'Brian, William H. Macy, Jayme Lawson
Genres: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Runtime: Approximately 2 hours
Release Date: November 14, 2025
In King's near-future America (which, awkwardly, is basically now), Ben Richards is a hothead with a heart of gold living in Co-Op City—a dystopian hellscape where economic inequality has evolved into full necrocapitalist horror. Blacklisted from employment after too many incidents of saving co-workers' lives instead of maximizing profit, Ben can't afford medicine for his infant daughter Cathy. His wife Sheila makes him promise he won't audition for "The Running Man," the Network's crown jewel programming where contestants are given a 12-hour head start before being hunted by masked assassins and a public incentivized with cash prizes to report their locations. No one has survived all 30 days to claim the billion-dollar prize. But producer Dan Killian sees something special in Ben's barely-contained rage and working-class defiance—he sees ratings gold. Through manipulation Ben doesn't fully understand, he finds himself on the show, sprinting across a surveillance-state America where every phone can become a weapon, every citizen a potential informant, and every day survived brings both more money and exponentially greater danger. As Ben outruns, outfights, and outwits his pursuers, he becomes an unexpected folk hero to millions watching at home, threatening the very system designed to keep people distracted and divided. Wright stages this as breathless chase movie, political allegory, and media satire simultaneously, cramming in everything from Home Alone-style booby traps to drone-shot action sequences to darkly comic product placement.
Story and Screenplay
Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall's screenplay faces an unenviable challenge: honoring King's dark, pessimistic source material while delivering blockbuster entertainment for 2025 audiences who've already lived through "The Hunger Games," "Squid Game," and countless other dystopian death-game narratives. Their solution is ambitious—stay structurally faithful to the novel while updating the social commentary for the social media age and injecting Wright's trademark kinetic energy and dark humor.
The film's greatest strength is its world-building, which feels both expansive and eerily familiar. This isn't some far-future alien landscape—it's recognizably America, just with the worst aspects dialed up to 11. Paper money has made a comeback (digital currency too easily tracked), but surveillance is ubiquitous through phones and cameras. The Network produces various game shows exploiting desperate people, from relatively benign endurance challenges to "The Running Man's" lethal spectacle. Wright and production designer Marcus Rowland create a retrofuturist aesthetic mixing gleaming dystopian cityscapes with cathode-ray-tube TVs and VHS cassettes—an intentional choice that reinforces the surveillance-state paranoia while nodding to 1980s sci-fi.
The screenplay excels at satirizing American culture through exaggeration that barely qualifies as exaggeration. "The Americanos," a Kardashian parody reality show following a vapid wealthy family, provides running commentary on how distraction serves power. Various game shows offer the illusion of upward mobility while reinforcing class hierarchies. The public's willingness to rat out contestants for cash prizes demonstrates how easily citizens become extensions of authoritarian control. These elements work because they're only slightly heightened versions of reality.
Where the script struggles is in balancing tones. The first hour crackles with sardonic energy as Ben navigates his 12-hour head start, adopting disguises, and barely avoiding detection. Wright's signature editing style—quick cuts synced to music, visual puns, meticulously choreographed chaos—gives these sequences propulsive momentum. But as the film progresses, it can't decide whether it's a dark satire about fascism or a crowd-pleasing action movie where the hero triumphs. The novel's ending is bracingly nihilistic in ways no major studio would allow, so Wright opts for something more hopeful. The problem isn't changing the ending per se, but that the new conclusion feels rushed, overly convenient, and tonally dissonant with everything preceding it.
The screenplay also suffers from an overstuffed supporting cast. Characters like Katy O'Brian's fellow contestant Laughlin (who spends her time on the show hitting casinos and strip clubs with a "better to burn out than fade away" philosophy) and William H. Macy's underground tech wizard Molie are introduced with promise but given insufficient screen time to develop. Josh Brolin's villain Dan Killian feels more like an obstacle than a fleshed-out antagonist—he's all gleaming veneers and producer smarminess without the depth that would make his inevitable breakdown earned.
The most awkward element is Emilia Jones' character, a wealthy civilian who gets caught up in Ben's flight. She appears extremely late in the runtime and suddenly becomes a major plot driver without adequate development, existing primarily to provide perspective on how Network propaganda affects the privileged classes. Her arc toward class consciousness happens too quickly to feel organic.
The screenplay's treatment of resistance movements and underground networks gestures at deeper themes about solidarity and collective action versus individual heroism, but these ideas never fully coalesce. We get glimpses of people helping Ben—Daniel Ezra's Bradley Throckmorton running a pirate broadcast channel, Michael Cera's Elton creating revolutionary zines—but the film can't quite commit to a coherent vision of how systemic change happens.
Acting and Characters
Glen Powell continues his march toward full-fledged movie stardom with a performance that's markedly different from his usual charismatic charmer persona. His Ben Richards is coiled rage barely contained in working-class clothes, a man worn down by a system that punishes decency and rewards cruelty. Powell plays him as physically capable but not superhuman—this isn't Arnold Schwarzenegger bench-pressing trucks. He's a regular guy who happens to have quick reflexes, street smarts, and desperation driving every decision.
Powell's best moments come when he's improvising survival, his face cycling through panic, calculation, and grim determination. Watch him during the opening YMCA hostel sequence when hunters close in—Powell conveys genuine fear alongside tactical thinking, making you believe this guy could actually survive through combination of luck and ingenuity. His rage face, as one critic noted, rivals Nicolas Cage's intensity, particularly during the many scenes where Ben's anger at systemic injustice threatens to overwhelm his survival instincts.
The performance occasionally feels limited by the script's determination to make Ben unambiguously heroic. We're shown multiple instances of him saving co-workers, refusing to compromise his principles, and putting others before himself—he gets an entire litter of cats to save establishing his likability. Powell's natural star quality already makes him easy to root for; the excessive moral gilding becomes redundant and prevents the character from having genuine flaws or complexity.
Josh Brolin brings gleaming, psychopathic charm to Dan Killian, weaponizing his handsomeness and that impossibly bright smile. He plays Killian as a man who genuinely believes in the system he perpetuates, who sees exploiting human suffering as "just showbiz, babe" with no moral qualms. Brolin's best moments are his early scenes evaluating Ben, recognizing both threat and opportunity. His character's third-act breakdown, however, doesn't feel earned—we haven't seen enough of his psychological infrastructure to make his collapse believable.
The film's secret weapons are its scene-stealing supporting players. Colman Domingo is having an absolute blast as Bobby Thompson, "The Running Man's" flamboyant host. Decked out in increasingly outrageous sequined suits, Domingo brings the silver-tongued ruthlessness of Ryan Seacrest crossed with a carnival barker's shamelessness. His character exists to remind us that entertainment can be a form of violence, and Domingo plays that duality perfectly—charming enough that you'd watch him, soulless enough that you'd fear him.
Michael Cera's brief appearance as Elton, an anarchist revolutionary who booby-traps his house Home Alone-style, is pure delight. Cera brings his trademark awkward energy to a character proudly destructive in service of ideology, creating an R-rated slapstick sequence that's one of the film's highlights. His enthusiasm for violence in pursuit of justice is both hilarious and slightly unsettling, exactly the tonal complexity the film needs more of.
Lee Pace as Evan McCone, the masked leader of the hunters, brings genuine menace despite being hidden behind a mask for most of the runtime. His physicality suggests a Revolver Ocelot-style operator—professional, ruthless, effective. It's a crime to hide Pace's face this long, but he makes the character work through movement and voice alone.
Katy O'Brian as contestant Laughlin steals her limited screen time with a "live fast, die young" philosophy that provides philosophical counterpoint to Ben's family-man desperation. She's choosing to burn out spectacularly rather than fade away in poverty, and O'Brian brings infectious joy to a character embracing hedonism in her final days.
Jayme Lawson as Ben's wife Sheila does what she can with an underwritten role, conveying the exhaustion and fear of a woman holding everything together while her husband risks his life. The script doesn't give her enough agency or screen time to fully develop, but Lawson sells the genuine love and terror.
Direction and Technical Aspects
Edgar Wright returns to full-throttle action filmmaking after the atmospheric horror of "Last Night in Soho," and while this might be his biggest canvas yet, it's also his least distinctively "Wright-ian" film. The trademark elements are present—whip-crack editing synced to music, elaborate one-take sequences, visual comedy woven into action—but they feel deployed in service of someone else's story rather than organically emerging from Wright's obsessions.
That's not to say the direction isn't impressive. Wright, working with cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon (his "Last Night in Soho" collaborator), creates visually striking setpieces that utilize space and movement brilliantly. An early sequence in a YMCA-like hostel where Ben hides from hunters is masterfully staged chaos—Wright uses the building's vertical architecture for a cat-and-mouse game that's part "Home Alone," part parkour chase, part war zone. The camera weaves through corridors, up stairwells, and into rooms with balletic fluidity while maintaining spatial coherence.
A later sequence involving drone camerawork adds verticality Wright hasn't explored before, creating a God's-eye view of the hunt that's both technically impressive and thematically resonant—we're watching with the same omniscient surveillance perspective as the Network audience. The decision to occasionally shoot from drone POV reinforces how technology has turned everyone into potential viewers and participants in violence.
The editing by Paul Machliss maintains Wright's signature rhythmic precision, cutting action to musical cues and finding visual puns in transitions. A scene where Ben discusses bringing domestic troubles onto the stage literally bridges from bedroom argument to comedy club stage. These flourishes work, though they occasionally feel like Wright going through his greatest hits rather than discovering new techniques.
Where Wright's direction falters is in sustaining tone across the film's runtime. The first hour is taut, energized, balancing satire and suspense effectively. The middle section maintains momentum through increasingly elaborate action sequences. But the final third becomes distended and herky-jerky, as if Wright couldn't figure out how to land the plane. The ending's attempts to wrap everything neatly feel incongruous with the film's earlier anarchic energy.
The production design by Marcus Rowland deserves special recognition for creating a retrofuturist dystopia that feels both alien and familiar. The gleaming cityscapes of Co-Op City contrast with brown, barren countryside. CRT televisions and VHS tapes coexist with advanced surveillance technology. "These TVs don't watch you back," notes one character, highlighting how low-tech solutions become resistance tools in a surveillance state. It's a smart visual strategy that grounds the sci-fi premise while allowing for period-appropriate '80s aesthetics Wright clearly loves.
The color palette is somewhat drab—lots of grays and browns—which serves the dystopian atmosphere but robs the film of visual pop. The exception is Colman Domingo's costumes, sequined and sparkly absurdist confections that provide necessary color amid the grimness.
Music and Atmosphere
Wright has always been a master of needle drops, using existing songs to punctuate action and emotion. "The Running Man" continues this tradition, though the soundtrack feels less integral to the DNA of the film than in "Baby Driver" or "Shaun of the Dead." The songs work in the moment but don't linger in memory the same way.
The original score complements the retrofuturist aesthetic, incorporating synthesizers and electronic elements that evoke '80s sci-fi while remaining contemporary. The music underscores action effectively without overwhelming it, though it lacks the distinctive personality of Wright's collaborations with composers like Steven Price.
The atmosphere Wright creates is one of paranoid energy—the sense that danger could emerge from anywhere, that any stranger could be a threat. The surveillance state is omnipresent but not always visible, creating ambient dread that occasionally explodes into violence. Wright understands that effective dystopias feel lived-in rather than designed, and the world of "The Running Man" has that authenticity despite its heightened elements.
Where the film struggles atmospherically is in its satire. Wright loves skewering pop culture—"The Americanos" reality show, various game shows, commercial interruptions—but these elements feel slightly defanged, lacking the viciousness of truly biting satire. It's Paul Verhoeven-lite rather than full-strength "RoboCop" or "Starship Troopers." The references to contemporary culture (Freevee as the Network's streaming brand, despite that being an actual Amazon service) occasionally break immersion rather than enhancing commentary.
Strengths and Weaknesses
What Works:
- Glen Powell's star-making turn as working-class hero Ben Richards
- Edgar Wright's kinetic action sequences showcasing his editing mastery
- Colman Domingo stealing every scene as flamboyant, ruthless host Bobby Thompson
- Michael Cera's brief but memorable appearance providing anarchic comic relief
- The retrofuturist production design mixing 1980s tech with modern dystopia
- Strong opening hour that balances satire, suspense, and character effectively
- Lee Pace's menacing physical performance despite being masked
- Katy O'Brian's scene-stealing work as hedonistic contestant Laughlin
- The film's contemporary relevance and prescient social commentary
- Impressive drone camerawork adding new dimensions to Wright's visual style
- The "Home Alone" booby-trap sequence executed with R-rated glee
- Genuine thrills and propulsive momentum throughout most of the runtime
What Doesn't:
- Overstuffed supporting cast with underdeveloped characters
- Josh Brolin's villain feels more like obstacle than fleshed-out antagonist
- Emilia Jones' character introduced too late and given too much importance too quickly
- The ending's attempt to wrap everything neatly feels rushed and incongruous
- Tonal inconsistency between dark satire and crowd-pleasing heroics
- Heavy-handed product placement and cultural references
- The satire doesn't bite as hard as it should given the subject matter
- Final act drags and loses momentum before the rushed conclusion
- The film can't decide if it's bleak King adaptation or hopeful Hollywood blockbuster
- Ben Richards is over-gilded as unambiguously heroic, lacking complexity
- Some of Wright's stylistic flourishes feel like greatest hits rather than organic choices
- The drab color palette (outside of costumes) robs the film of visual pop
Final Verdict
"The Running Man" is a fascinating, frustrating film—one that works brilliantly as pure blockbuster entertainment while struggling to achieve the satirical bite and thematic depth it occasionally reaches for. Edgar Wright has crafted his most accessible, crowd-pleasing film in years, a propulsive action-thriller that showcases his formidable technical skills even as it represents his least personal work. That's both a feature and a bug.
As an action spectacle, the film succeeds admirably. Wright stages chase sequences, fight scenes, and elaborate setpieces with the kinetic energy and visual inventiveness that made "Baby Driver" and "Hot Fuzz" so exhilarating. Glen Powell proves himself a genuine movie star capable of anchoring a major action franchise, bringing physicality, charisma, and emotional depth to a character who could have been one-dimensional. The supporting cast—particularly Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, and Katy O'Brian—elevate their limited screen time into memorable moments.
The film's contemporary relevance cannot be overstated. King's vision of 2025 America—economically stratified, authoritarian, obsessed with violent spectacle that keeps citizens divided—feels less like science fiction and more like documentary. Wright and Bacall update the surveillance state aspects effectively, showing how phones and cameras turn everyone into potential informants, how deepfakes can be created instantly, how social media has made us all performers in someone else's content. The film's rage at inequality and systemic injustice pulses beneath the action, giving the violence weight beyond mere spectacle.
Where "The Running Man" stumbles is in its inability to commit fully to either satirical darkness or mainstream hope. King's novel is bracingly nihilistic, offering no easy answers or comforting resolutions. The 1987 film leaned fully into camp absurdity. Wright's version occupies an uncomfortable middle ground—too dark to be purely fun, too hopeful to be genuinely subversive. The ending in particular feels like a studio-mandated compromise, wrapping up loose ends with convenient resolutions that betray the film's earlier anarchic spirit.
The satirical elements similarly feel blunted. Wright includes all the apparatus of media satire—reality show parodies, game show commentary, advertising excess—but without the viciousness that makes satire truly bite. It's closer to gentle ribbing than scathing critique. Compare this to Verhoeven's "RoboCop" or "Starship Troopers," which used similar dystopian frameworks to savage American culture with gleeful venom. Wright's film gestures at that level of commentary but rarely achieves it, perhaps because maintaining blockbuster palatability requires pulling punches.
The overcrowded supporting cast represents missed opportunities. Characters like William H. Macy's tech wizard Molie and Katy O'Brian's Laughlin suggest entire storylines that could have been explored. Josh Brolin's Killian needed more psychological development to make his arc credible. Emilia Jones' late-arriving character disrupts the film's rhythm rather than enhancing it. A tighter focus on fewer characters might have allowed for greater depth.
Despite these criticisms, "The Running Man" remains one of 2025's most entertaining blockbusters. Wright's craftsmanship is undeniable—even when the film's themes don't fully cohere, the moment-to-moment execution is thrilling. Powell's performance alone makes it worth seeing, and the action sequences deliver genuine excitement. For audiences seeking escapist entertainment with a veneer of social commentary, this hits the mark.
The film also succeeds as a more faithful King adaptation than the 1987 version, capturing the novel's class consciousness and paranoid energy even if it can't match its darkness. Fans of the book will appreciate Wright's attention to details like the self-recorded video confessionals contestants must submit daily, the specific rules of the game, and the geography of Ben's cross-country flight.
Ultimately, "The Running Man" is caught between two worlds—the bleak, uncompromising vision of its source material and the crowd-pleasing requirements of modern blockbuster filmmaking. It succeeds more often than it fails, delivering visceral thrills and timely commentary even when it can't fully reconcile its competing impulses. Wright has made a very good action movie that could have been a great dystopian satire if he'd been willing to push harder into darkness.
Recommended for: Edgar Wright fans, Glen Powell enthusiasts, action movie devotees seeking expertly crafted setpieces, viewers interested in dystopian fiction with contemporary relevance, fans of "The Hunger Games" and "Squid Game" wanting similar death-game narratives, those who appreciate retrofuturist aesthetics, audiences seeking blockbuster entertainment with social commentary, anyone who wanted a more faithful Stephen King adaptation than the 1987 version.
Not recommended for: Viewers seeking Wright's most distinctive, personal work, those expecting the novel's full darkness and nihilism, audiences allergic to heavy-handed social commentary, people tired of dystopian death-game narratives, anyone seeking subtle satire, those who prefer the campy fun of the Arnold Schwarzenegger version, viewers wanting tightly plotted narratives without tonal inconsistencies.
"The Running Man" sprints into theaters November 14, 2025. For more comprehensive Film Reviews across all genres, explore our coverage of 2025 Films and dive into our sections on Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, and Thriller cinema.
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