The Running Man Review: Edgar Wright’s Remake Swaps Satire for a Soulless Sprint. In an age saturated with remakes, the challenge is not simply to recreate, but to justify a story’s return. The 1987 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man was a brash, cynical, and shockingly prescient satire of 80s excess, starring an invincible Arnold Schwarzenegger at the height of his powers. It was a film that understood the grotesque spectacle of reality television before the genre even had a name. Now, acclaimed director Edgar Wright has stepped into the arena to offer a modern take, but the result is a slick, hollow echo of its predecessor—a film that runs hard but ultimately goes nowhere.
Wright’s version doesn’t stray far from the core premise. In a dystopian near-future, the masses are pacified by a brutal game show where contestants—framed as society’s villains—are hunted by celebrity killers for a life-changing prize. But where the original film posited a totalitarian state as the architect of this cruelty, the 2025 remake shifts the blame to the television network itself. The government has been replaced by the boardroom, ruled by a megalomaniacal producer played by Josh Brolin, whose slicked-back villainy feels uncomfortably familiar. In a clever, if unsubtle, visual jab, the network’s headquarters is crowned with a giant spinning “N,” a clear nod to a certain real-world streaming giant.
Stepping into Schwarzenegger’s formidable shoes is Glen Powell, an actor whose charisma has been proven time and again. Here, he plays Ben Richards, an everyman hero framed by a deep-fake AI plot and forced to run to secure life-saving medicine for his sick daughter. Powell certainly looks the part; he’s chiseled, intense, and spends a requisite amount of screen time glistening with sweat. Yet, the script gives him shockingly little to work with beyond a one-note personality trait: he’s “very angry.” The screenplay, seemingly assembled from a generic action-movie algorithm, feeds him platitudes like, “I’m done with playing defense,” leaving Powell to glower and sprint his way through a narrative that lacks any real heart or wit.
This lack of satirical bite is the film’s most glaring failure. The 1987 original was a masterpiece of tone, blending over-the-top violence with scathing social commentary. It was loud, absurd, and deeply intelligent in its critique of media manipulation. Wright, a director celebrated for his kinetic, genre-bending comedies like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, seems entirely out of his element here. The buddy-cop chemistry he famously forged with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is absent, replaced by a self-serious tone that drains the story of its crucial satirical lifeblood. The cute wisecracks feel misplaced, and the moments of action, while competently staged, lack the anarchic glee of the original.
The supporting cast is similarly underserved. The brilliant Colman Domingo is cast as the game show’s oily host, a role that should have been a feast of bombastic showmanship. Instead, he is strangely restrained, never allowed to chew the scenery in the way Richard Dawson memorably did in the original. The potential for a truly menacing and charismatic villain is squandered, leaving a vacuum at the story’s center.
The film rumbles along with explosions, chase sequences, and the occasional narrative twist, but it never feels dangerous or particularly inventive. It’s a perfectly serviceable piece of popcorn entertainment, a high-gloss blockbuster that checks all the boxes without ever challenging its audience. There’s even a fun Easter egg for fans, with Arnie’s face appearing on the billion-dollar prize money—a small reminder of the superior film that came before it.
Ultimately, The Running Man (2025) is far from a disaster, but it is a profound disappointment. It takes a story that was decades ahead of its time in predicting our obsession with misinformation and reality TV and offers nothing new to say. By sanding down the original’s rough, satirical edges, Wright has created a film that is competently made but culturally irrelevant. It’s a chase movie that, despite all its frantic motion, feels like it’s standing perfectly still. Don’t run to the cinema for this one; a brisk walk will do.
