The Long Walk

The Running Man

15/11/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

A new Edgar Wright movie is generally a cause for celebration, even if The Running Man falls some way short of the dizzy heights he attained with films like Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho. And it certainly goes a long way to erase the memory of the shonky 1987 version of this story, which featured characters running around in multi-coloured jumpsuits and prompted author Stephen King to have his name removed from the credits. This adaptation, it turns out, comes with the author’s seal of approval.

The original novella is famously set in 2025: America has become a dystopian authoritarian police state, where the poverty-stricken working classes are ruled by corporate media networks, who keep them hooked on an endless diet of brutal reality-TV game shows. This used to feel like a big stretch but, with recent political developments in the USA, it seems an all-too credible premise.

Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is a blue-collar worker, currently black-listed because of his tendency to voice his feelings about the rotten state of his day-to-day existence. His wife, Sheila (Jayme Lawson), works at a hostess bar in Co-Op City and the couple are desperately trying to scrape together enough money to buy medicine for their sick infant daughter. Ben tells Sheila that he’s seriously thinking of signing up as a contestant on one of those hazardous game shows, but promises her that he won’t try his luck on the one with the biggest payout: The Running Man.

But of course, it’s hardly a surprise that the show’s producer – the smarmy, toothy, super-positive Mike Killian (Josh Brolin) – thinks Ben will make an ideal player for the titular game and that he could be the very first person in the show’s history to walk away with the billion-dollar prize money. It’s a tempting proposition…

This is a big, brash, blockbuster of a film with enough world-building to make Co-Op City (a heavily disguised Glasgow) look queasily realistic. With the help of his old friend, Molie (an underused William H Macy), Ben manages to start off his run aided by a couple of fairly convincing disguises and some forged paperwork – but the odds are stacked and there’s a team of professional hunters hot on his trail. They know all the angles and it’s only a matter of time before they begin to close in. The result is a super-propulsive chase movie, which swings expertly from one action-packed sequence to the next, with Ben escaping death by a hair’s breadth at every turn. It’s thrilling enough to keep me on the edge of my seat for the film’s first half.

A later section where Ben ends up seeking refuge in the home of rebel Elton Parrakis (Michael Cera) is, for me, the film’s weakest hand. Parrakis has rigged his home with boobytraps and a long sequence where a group of hunters attempt to enter it plays out like Home Alone on steroids. While it’s undeniably fun, it serves to dilute the air of menace that the director and his co-writer, Michael Bacall, have worked so hard to create.

Furthermore, the film has no credible roles for its female characters. Sheila is only really present in the film’s early scenes and an attempt in the final third to introduce Amelia (Emilia Jones), a civilian whom Ben is obliged to take as his hostage, offers her too little to do and not enough reason for actually being there, right up the point where she is – quite literally – parachuted out of the story.

Nevertheless, this is eminently watchable stuff. It’s perhaps unfortunate that another of King’s ‘Richard Bachman’ books, The Long Walk, hit the screens only a couple of months ago and arguably made a better fist of adapting what is a very similar – if somewhat more sedate – concept.

But those who book tickets for The Running Man will surely find plenty here to enjoy. Sharp-eyed viewers may even spot a familiar face gracing America’s one-hundred dollar bills…

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney

The Long Walk

14/09/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

As I’ve observed elsewhere, Stephen King is one of the most screen-adapted authors in living history and you’d think, wouldn’t you, that by now they’d have run out of titles to turn into movies? I mean, what stone has been left unturned? Well, there’s always The Long Walk, a story about a dystopian future where young men enter a lottery in order to be able to compete in a gruelling competition – where the winner will be handed a fortune while losers will be eliminated one by one, with a well-aimed bullet.

And before people start muttering about this being ripped off from The Hunger Games, it’s worth mentioning that King wrote the original novel when he was seventeen and that it was published way back in 1979, under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. (Bachman also wrote The Running Man, already filmed in 1987 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, with a new version looming on the cinematic horizon.)

The competitor we’re rooting for in the titular ordeal is Raymond Garrity (Cooper Hoffman) and the guy he pals up with is Peter McVries (David Jonsson) – but there are plenty of other participants and we learn something about most of them by the time we approach the three-hundred-mile marker. The event is presided over by The Major (an almost unrecognisable Mark Hamill). As the walk progresses, we witness some truly horrible executions and some almost as awful depictions of what happens when the participants are not even allowed the luxury of a toilet break…

The danger here, of course, is that such a stripped-back storyline might mean that the narrative becomes repetitive, so kudos must go to director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner, who somehow manage to incorporate enough gear changes to keep me thoroughly entertained (if that’s the right word) throughout a one hour and forty-eight minute run time. It’s also chilling to note that, with the current political upheaval in the USA, the premise of this story feels queasily credible.

More than anything else, this is a film about male friendship, about honour and sacrifice. Hoffman, who made such a confident debut in Licorice Pizza is quietly compelling here as a young man nurturing a secret thirst for vengeance, while Jonsson makes the perfect foil for him: relaxed, compassionate and nurturing. As I say, we do learn about several of the other competitors, but this film belongs to its central duo, who keep us walking alongside them right up to the shattering conclusion.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney