Glen Powell’s The Running Man Rages at a Dystopia That’s Already Here: Review

One of the funnier aspects of dystopian fiction is when the present day catches up with the far-flung years first imagined by science fiction writers. Stephen King’s novel The Running Man depicts a 2025 where America has become a totalitarian empire and everyone’s obsessed with what’s on their screens. Director/co-writer Edgar Wright’s new adaptation/remake, starring Glen Powell, has updated the original text to take place in a non-specific “near future” from today. However, very little updating to the premise was really needed to make sure that its themes of class warfare and corporate overreach feel almost too relevant.

While the 1987 movie gets acknowledged with a fun Easter egg or two (sadly no rocket sleds, though), Wright and co-writer Michael Bacall devote their energy early on to creating a new protagonist: This Ben Richards (Powell) is a blue-collar worker who’s been blacklisted from most work opportunities after sticking up for the little guy one too many times. And with a sick toddler at home, he and his wife (Jayme Lawson) are more than a little desperate for some extra cash.

Wright puts some significant and impressive work into building out this America not too far from our own — while paper money has made a major comeback, technology otherwise ensures that the average citizen has very little privacy and even fewer opportunities to bootstrap their way out of poverty. The only reliable source of hope for a person to improve their lot in life: The ever-present game shows, most of which are only slightly exaggerated versions of what you might see on network television these days.

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Then there’s The Running Man, the most violent and deadly of those games, which tracks three contestants per season as they try to escape a pack of “hunters” looking to take them out — and civilians also have incentive to join the pursuit, thanks to the cash prizes being awarded by the Network. (The Network is never really given much of a name beyond “The Network,” but given the current media consolidation already happening today, it’s really not hard to see that aspect of this future looming.)

Ben goes to Network HQ to audition for literally any other game but The Running Man — however, thanks to an early rage-out while checking in, he attracts the attention of super-producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), who hard-pitches Ben on becoming the star of the next season. The mechanisms that lead to Ben getting drawn into the game feel a little forced — he just gets kind of weirdly manipulated into it in a way that doesn’t feel quite believable. Given that that’s the crucial decision holding this movie’s plot together, it’s a little disappointing.

Yet once he’s signed on the dotted line and put on the jumpsuit, the movie immediately leaps on that momentum, the pace active as Ben does his best to lie low despite literally being one of America’s most wanted men. (For the Hit Man fans out there, a plethora of disguises are involved.) High-tech and low-tech elements combine for much of the action, as Ben uses the physical skills he picked up from his more strenuous past jobs as well as his own innate cleverness to outwit his pursuers. Though he also, more often than not, is relying on the kindness of strangers as well.

The Running Man (Paramount Pictures)

There’s a lot of cast here, often given just enough time to make an impression: Brolin’s wide bright smile is easily one of the most unhinged parts of the movie; Colman Domingo, meanwhile, is having an absolute ball playing game show host, with the costume department really pulling out all the stops in terms of making sure his suits achieve new sartorial heights. CODA star Emilia Jones pops in as a wealthy passerby who gets caught up in Ben’s race from death, while Michael Cera has a lot of fun as an aspiring revolutionary who’s a bit too excited about the potential for violence.

As for our star, Powell is really making his case for being one of the few true movie stars of his generation, bringing a manic glee to the screen that gives him that special spark beyond being really really ridiculously good-looking. One area of the movie that feels underdeveloped is Ben as a character: While there are the threads of him potentially getting a real arc, perhaps tied to his anger issues, there’s not much opportunity for him to learn and grow as a person while also fighting for his life. That being said, Powell’s rage face might go so far as to rival Nicolas Cage’s, the highest possible compliment.

While the world-building is relatively solid, there are flaws in the construction of this fictional America: There is a Kardashians reality parody running in the background throughout the movie that speaks to Wright’s love for skewering pop culture, but it feels a little defanged. Also, it’s more than a little disconcerting that the game shows and other random programming provided by the Network are referred to as “freevee,” since Freevee was literally what Amazon used to call its free television app until September 2025. (It had been slowly phased out starting in 2024, but the human memory isn’t that short, right?)

The Running Man stands up well as a standard Hollywood blockbuster, offering plenty of surface-level delights. However, it doesn’t really offer Wright much of an opportunity to bring his own flair to the project — beyond the casting of Cera and some slapstick elements, it’s hard to get a sense of his own personal stamp on the material. It does also offer a more anarchic message than we might be used to from our standard Hollywood blockbusters, but that message gets drowned out, leaving behind a loud violent romp that’s almost a bit too on the nose for these loud violent times of ours. Real blood doesn’t need to be shed for the masses to be placated by bread and circuses. It’s the distraction that matters.

The Running Man trots into theaters on Friday, November 14th. Check out the trailer below.