A man joins a game show in which contestants, allowed to go anywhere in the world, are pursued by “hunters” hired to kill them.

Edgar Wright’s latest movie is a remake of ‘The Running Man’, one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cheesy 80s sci-fi action thrillers, itself based on a Stephen King novel. In this adaptation, supposedly more accurate to the book than the Arnie movie, we follow Ben Richards, a poor man struggling to provide for his wife and sick daughter in a futuristic dystopian world, who is attracted to the financial rewards on offer from becoming a contestant on one of the plethora of reality TV shows (so far, doesn’t sound too different to the present!). This leads him to ‘The Running Man’, the top-rated series where contenders must go on the run for 30 days as highly trained ‘hunters’ and the general public attempt to track him down.

Richards is played by Glen Powell, who I’ve generally quite enjoyed in a variety of other movies, with a supporting cast led by Josh Brolin and Colman Domingo as the show creator and show host respectively. The story itself is fine if fairly predictable, and Powell is serviceable as the lead, although I’m not quire sure I’m buying him fully as an action lead at this stage (the ‘new’ Tom Cruise labels are not on point for me at least). I suspect if you spent much time thinking about it the contradictions and holes in the plotting would add up, so it’s probably for the best it moves at a fair pace from set piece to set piece.

Edgar Wright was once a promising director, and maybe he still is, but this is an action movie by the numbers that could have been made by any jobbing director, with little to make it stand out from the crowd. One of the biggest disappointments is how poor the world building is, which is usually a strength of science fiction movies (or at least good ones). It is essentially our world with a few more big screens and bigger weapons, and I just wasn’t really interested in it. For all the Arnie version is flawed, it is at least over the top, gonzo and fun. This isn’t really that, nor is it remotely good enough to be taken more seriously.

I didn’t dislike ‘The Running Man’ and for mindless escapism it passed a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon, but it is undoubtedly forgettable and feels hopelessly middle of the road.

Rating: 2/5

Directed By: Edgar Wright

Starring: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Colman Domingo and Josh Brolin

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt14107334/