In a dystopian future where America is run by a totalitarian government who use the media to control and subjugate the masses a down on his luck worker named Ben Richards (Glen Powell) enters the blood thirsty TV gameshow The Running Man. Can he change the rigged game and get a better outcome than everyone who has gone before him? 

The Running Man is perhaps best known for the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger than the 1982 novel by Stephen King (under his pseudonym Richard Bachman). But this 2025 adaptation by British director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver, Last Night In Soho) is based on the book rather than being a remake of the film. Which means that whilst we still get the razzmatazz of the gameshow and the dystopian reality where the state controls the media and therefore the population there is none of the 1980’s gladiator style Hunters and Schwarzenegger quips. 

The plot follows Ben Richards attempts to save his family. Blacklisted from working as a result of speaking up for the safety of his co-workers and with a sick daughter the only option he sees to get the money he needs for her medicine is to audition for the Network TV shows. The Running Man in this adaptation still has a group of “Hunters” set on a trio of runners. But here they have the option to go anywhere they want and just have to survive for thirty days whilst sending back one recorded video of themselves per day. 

This means we get to see Richards trying on different disguises, meeting old friends and making new ones in his pursuit of hideouts and of course the occasional burst of action as his location is discovered. The undercurrent throughout is that the media manipulate the downtrodden to turn on each other rather than look at the people who control it. An incredibly powerful and current storyline that Stephen King seemingly predicted along with reality TV and the idea that we are constantly able to be tracked by the devices we use. 

Glen Powell is superb as a man whose super power is his anger. But it is an anger that he is able to channel towards the right people as those around them find themselves easily led. Everyone around him is there only fleetingly given the whole purpose of The Running Man is to keep moving. William H. Macy plays an old friend who is just incredibly sad that he knows he is going to be losing a pal. Michael Cera (star of Edgar Wright’s brilliant Scott Pilgrim Vs The World) is a revolutionary who has rigged his house just like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, just more deadly. It’s perhaps the best segment of the film as Wright lets his directorial hair down. Colman Domingo shines as the flamboyant host of the show, but the likes of Josh Brolin and Lee Pace find themselves with slightly less to do as the producer and hunter of the titular show. 

There is a lot going on and a lot to like but it stumbles heavily in its final moments where it turns away from the books plot and turns in three separate endings that feel muddled and confused. Any one of them could have worked but all of them together seem to undermine the message that was so clearly set out before them. 

Hopefully future watches will uncover more depth. For now though this feels like a lesser Edgar Wright movie in his catalogue thanks to that stumble.