“The Running Man” has a theme that has become more and more familiar: Contestants run while people try to kill them. The winner just needs to survive. Based on a Stephen King novel, Edgar Wright’s version which stars Glen Powell is miles better than the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger version and aims to please heterosexual female fans while providing good action sequences.

King wrote under the pen name of Richard Bachman and that was before “The Hunger Games”  series of young adult dystopian novels were churned out by Suzanne Collins (beginning in 2008 with “The Hunger Games” and now continued with the 2025 “Sunrise on the Reaping”).

If “The Running Man” conjures up the many videos of Tom Cruise or Ezra Miller running, you won’t get that with Glen Powell and even less with Schwarzenegger. They do run, but it’s not like a race but more like a mad scramble through mayhem.

The Running Man (1987) ⭐️⭐️

In the 1980s, the 2010s must have seemed so distant. The prologue title gives us the US in 2017.

By 2017 the world economy has collapsed, food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand.WeTelevision is controlled by the state and a sadistic game show called “The Running Man” has become the most popular program in history. All art, music and communications are censored. No dissent is tolerated. And yet a small resistance movement has managed to survive underground

When high-tech gladiators are not enough to suppress the people’s yearning for freedom…

…more direct methods become necessary.

Directed by Paul Michael Glaser who starred in the 1970s TV series “Starsky & Hutch” as Dave Starsky) with a screenplay by Steven E. de Souza (“Die Hard,” 1988 and “Die Hard 2,” 1990), this film This is more cheesy than Cheetos and brings back the nightmare of French-cut leotards as it embraces some of the style excesses of the 1980s.

The action starts in California when there’s a food riot in Bakersfield, California. Captain Ben Richards,(Schwarzenegger) is flying a helicopter on a mission to quell the riot. His high-tech helicopter systems tell him the people are unarmed and mostly women and children, but he’s ordered to open fire and kill the rioters. While he disobeys the order (“The hell with you. I will not fire on helpless people.), the rest of his squad subdue him and kill the rioters. The state-controlled media blames Richards for the slaughter and he’s dubbed the Butcher of Bakersfield.

Now in a prison labor camp, he teams up with resistance members Harold Weiss and William Laughlin to escape. Parting ways with them, he goes to his brother’s apartment only to learn that his brother has been detained for “re-education” (torture) and a member of the broadcast team, Amber Mendez, living there instead. Mendez alerts the authorities and Richards is caught and arrested. But the news broadcast claims that Richards murdered people during his escape. Knowing that is false, Mendez begins an investigation which leads to her discovering the actual footage from Bakersfield.

The ruthless host of the reality TV series “The Running Man,” Damon Killian (Richard Dawson), wants Richards to help his ratings. Richards is forced to participate in the games because Killian threatens to use Weiss and Laughlin instead. Killian ultimately does send all three out into the game zone, an abandoned part of Los Angeles. In this script, the threesome are being chased by professional hunters, stalkers, who take advice from the musical “Gypsy”: They have a gimmick. There’s the chainsaw-wielding Buzzsaw (Gus Rethwisch), the hokey hockey fan Subzero (Professor Toru Tanaka) and the electrifying Dynamo (Erland Van Width).

In this version, winners of the game are supposedly retired to live in some tropical paradise. Before he became governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura played top stalker, Captain Freedom, in this flick. Killian calls Captain Freedom out of retirement, but he’s reluctant to leave his current lifestyle.

The original premise was to star Christopher Reeves under the direction of George P. Cosmatos (“Rambo: First Blood Part II,” 1985 and “Tombstone,” 1993), but started with Schwarzenegger as the lead and Andrew Davis as director (“The Fugitive,” 1993). Reeves had already finished three Superman films by then (“Superman,” 1978; “Superman II,” 1980 and “Superman III,” 1983). His “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” came out in July of 1987 while “The Running Man” came out in November.

Davis left and Glaser took over. The film is better suited to television and its stalkers inspire groan-worthy puns that Schwarzenegger delivers with leaden deadpan. Schwarzenegger’s acting improved but he was also better under director James Cameron earlier in the 1980s with the 1984 “The Terminator.” Richard Dawson’s villain is the best part of the film. The 1980s aerobics craze coupled with French-cut leotards (I lived through the 1980s and I hated this style) is evidenced in the reality TV show’s dancers (choreographed by Paula Abdul) and  provides ample opportunities for crotch and butt shots favored by the male gaze reality. One of the taglines for this R-rated film was: “The year is 2019. The finest men in America don’t run for President. They run for their lives.”

The Running Man (2025) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

You might think of Glen Powell as a sunny, smiling man, here, in “The Running Man,” he is an angry man, Ben Richards,  whose honesty and quick temper has gotten him fired from good blue-collar jobs.  He’s just lost another job opportunity in this dystopian police state, but who goes to an interview with a sick child? Their child, Cathy, needs medicine, but with only the income provided by his wife, Sheila (Jayme Lawson), who works as a hostess at a gentleman’s club, they can’t afford it. Richards decides to audition for one of the many exploitive and often dangerous reality shows on FreeVee.

Richards’ anger and physical fitness only qualify him for one show, the only show his wife asked (and he promised) not to participate in, “The Running Man.” In this version, the TV show releases three runners with cash and a 12-hour head start. They can only be hunted during certain time periods and they must send a videotape of themselves early 24-hours. Each day they survive, they earn more money. If they can survive 30 days, they win enough cash to keep them comfy for a lifetime. Although they are tracked by “hunters,” the public can also earn rewards for reporting a runner sighting or killing one. As with many reality shows, there’s a formula: angry person (Richards), clueless person (Martin Herlihy as Tim Jansky) and hedonist (Katy O’Brien as Jenni Laughlin).

This version places the oozing evilness on the show’s producer, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) while the show host, Bobby T (Colman Domingo), is just a shallow huckster, an opportunist rather than a ruthless, controlling amoral force behind the show. So far, none of the contestants has survived 30 days; one has survived 29.  As with the 1987 film, Killian releases a lot of misinformation, using AI to generate images that make Richards unpopular, but on the run, Richards does have old and new friends to help him. While this gave me a fleeting shiver, making me wonder what the current presidential administration would do or is doing, surrendering to this violent fictional world is probably the better way to go.

I wish that Micheal Cera’s character, Elton Parrakis, had survived and continued his lunatic crazy defensive actions. While in the 1987 version, director Glaser zoomed in for the male gaze, the 2025 producer/director Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”) who scripted with Michael Bacall (“22 Jump Street,” 2014) doesn’t forget that Powell is a thirst trap. The scenario seemed ludicrous to me and I laughed, but one isn’t meant to take this film too seriously even under the current president.  Yes, I did notice that Bacall gets credited twice as a writer, first separately and then with Wright. This script doesn’t attempt for the corny black humor of the 1987 film and as director, Wright keeps the action moving fast enough that you don’t ponder on socio-political implications or loopholes.

Both films get high marks for diversity, but Glen Powell’s version is better crafted and paced. For lovers of the 1980s, there is less Spandex involved in the 2025 version but still gets an R rating for violence and brief (non-frontal) male nudity. We do get to see a happy Ben Richards in the end, but I don’t think that’s much of a spoiler. There is a nod to Schwarzenegger: His face appears on the $100 bills in this version. Reportedly, King is happier with this version.

 

“The Running Man” had its world premiere in London on 5 November 2024. It was released in the US on 14 November 2025 by Paramount Pictures.