Tags: blog, film, action, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday December 21st, 2025
There's little hope but the fool that I am
There’s an interesting shot near the start of this movie where Ben Richards crosses the street, weaving between the traffic. And all the cars are retro-futuristic. A vision of the future seen from the perspective of the nineteen eighties. It’s a lovely little homage to the original movie.
But it’s never made clear what this tells us about the world we're in. Is this an alternate world where their future aesthetic is our past fashion? Or is it our future that's become nostalgic for eighties design? It's never explained and whilst it's a minor and incidental detail, the films inability to explore its own setting is what causes it to fall flat on its face.
Glen Powell is excellent as Ben Richards, just the right mix of down-to-earth charisma and nothing-left-to-lose craziness. He's ably directed through a series of action set pieces by Edgar Wright who reigns in his more extravagant side but keeps everything moving forward at a decent pace. But whilst Ben's story is clearly told, everything else that's going on in the background is merely hand waived away.
The Running Man tv show is supposed to be a tool of a totalitarian government/corporation to subdue and placate its citizens, and Ben's success is supposed to be a threat to their power. But beyond the occasional piece of stulted exposition, the shape of that groundswell of support is never explained. How is Ben killing everyone supposed to undermine Josh Brolin's slimy tv exec? The answer is more torturous plot devices and a shrug.
Eventually, a character the film has long forgotten about suddenly returns to literally 7-Zark-7 the next bit of the plot. At this point the film simply gives up, gives you the most basic ending you could have imagined from the start, and leaves you wondering why you bothered investing any time in this.
It gives me no pleasure to dislike this as I absolutely love Edgar Wright, but this is an unmitigated disaster.
