Towel Power
One of Stephen King’s most prescient novels gets a faithful screen treatment, if not a particularly spicy one.
The Running Man
Director: Edgar Wright • Writers: Michael Bacall, Edgar Wright, based on the novel by Richard Bachman
Starring: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Jayme Lawson, Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, Lee Pace
USA • 2hrs 13mins
Opens Hong Kong November 13 • IIB
Grade: B
Really? A neo-fascist, dystopian America ruled by a billionaire class cabal of government and media types (like, oh, Paramount), pumping out news and entertainment designed to stoke fear of the underclass and entrench division among the public? GTFOH with that nonsense. Who ever heard of such a thing?
As a matter of fact, writer Stephen King did, way back in 1982 when he published The Running Man as Richard Bachman. Salty language aside, King’s book was bang on in a lot of ways, predicting deep fakes, totalitarianism, environmental racism, unattainable health care for the working class and a constant drone of state approved misinformation on TV – and proves why artists are always the first target in times of unrest. In the way Paul Michael Glaser adapted the story to be a purely of its time, classic über-macho Arnold Schwarzenegger actioner in 1987, Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver, atoning for Last Night in Soho) is heading back to the source for an adaptation that is purely 2025, yet is also somehow very old-fashioned.
In the Schwarzenegger role this time around is Glen Powell, Hollywood’s (literally) great white hope as the next accessbile everyman superstar (hey, Tom Cruise is getting on). Powell is Ben Richards, a totally ripped generic blue collar labourer who can’t get a job because he’s been blacklisted for being mouthy (no way that happens!). His inability to work means his wife Sheila (Sinners’ Jayme Lawson, described in the book “not an attractive woman” so great casting there) has to do double shifts at a seedy nightclub to earn enough cash for their sick infant. In a moment of desperation he marches down to the Network to audition for one of its many quick-cash game shows and winds up on the Network’s Most Dangerous Game-style megahit The Running Man.
He’ll need a shower soon…
Wright’s USP is that his The Running Man is faithful to the book – which is set in 2025 (!) – where Glaser’s was loosely inspired by it. Anyone who expects the book’s finale, where Ben flies a plane into an office tower (!!) is delusional. Ditto if you think we’ll be treated to the scene where, right before the plane crash, he gets shot in the stomach and finds his intestines getting snagged on seats and doors and bodies (!!!). Even without those grotty nuggets Wright, his co-writer Michael Bacall (the Jump Street comedies, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and his regular production designer Marcus Rowland (Rocketman) do a reasonable job of transferring King’s dystopian megalopolis to the screen; it’s all grey and defaced and divided, and both Ben and the movie are righteously pissed from jump. When Ben gets to the Network he’s fast-tracked through auditions by producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin, in the role previously played by gloriously sleazy IRL game show host Richard Dawson) who likes his moxie and wants to mould him into The Running Man’s star attraction. Sick kid and all that, Ben is in no position to turn him down, and begins his rise to folk herodom with a saucy interview on game night with show host Bobby T (Colman Domingo, fabulously campy).
The Running Man gets off to quick start, taking us from bleak home life in the wrong part of Co-Op City, to the anonymous ghettos of New York and Boston in rapid fire succession, slowing down only for Ben to worry about his family every so often, check in on neighbour and fellow contestant Laughlin (Love Lies Bleeding’s Katy O’Brian, underused) and pick up an occasional ally: forger Molie (William H Macy), community activist Bradley (Daniel Ezra), anarchist Elton (Michael Cera). Some of the action is viewed as “reality”, some of it through the Network’s drone cameras and spit out as glitzy programming by Bobby T.
The Running Man is either of two minds, or one very confused one. It’s fine … if too long (ideally this is a nice tight 100 minutes, 110 at a push), with intermittent chuckles and some super-low-key, razor sharp observations about wealth, power and rage. But Bacall can’t seem to pick a lane for tone. This needs to be way more serious or way more satirical (à la the almost perfect RoboCop), and as it stands it’s walking an awkward line between the two and sacrificing its thematic punch. The foundations are there, but why did no one swap out TV for social media, video tapes for phone video, or ratings for Like/Share/Subscribe? A grand tradition of dystopian sci-fi is the retro-future, but nowhere do Wright and Bacall detail the social, environmental and/or economic collapse that created this dystopia. What’s left is a vaguely recognisable world that’s simultaneously current and non-specific. No doubt Wright started shooting long before the shitshow the world’s become got that way, but it feels like mealy-mouthed work by a hired gun, not Wright interpreting King.
But it’s still entertaining, a great deal of which has to do with Domingo, serving 100% ’80s sass, and of course Powell, who carries the film across too many finish lines, not because he’s convincing as a man experiencing severe hardship but through sheer force of charm. His wounded cis het dude energy is strong but not offensive, and it’s one of the reasons he’s such an appealing screen presence. The Running Man is one of those movies that’s hard not to have a good time with your friends at, especially when Powell escapes from the game hunters – led by Lee Pace under a mask most of the time and WTF, movie? – in just a towel. It’s an amazing towel, and only moves when he rips it off. I’m going to be incorrect and cite this scene as a highlight. Oh, and eat the rich. Right.