It’s a damn shame that Tom Cruise didn’t star as the titular “Running Man” in Paul Michael Glaser’s spectacularly flaky 1980s classic. Everybody knows Cruise has the best, most wonderfully perpendicular gait in the business; the man has turned running into an art form. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who of course is the film’s actual star, is a decent runner too—far better in fact as a runner than an actor. But he moves heavily and gracelessly, truly pounding the pavement, whereas Tom propels himself forward in a way that makes you wonder whether he might lift off the ground at any moment.
History provided a way to address this egregious oversight, director Edgar Wright’s new The Running Man movie (which arrives in cinemas later this year) having the opportunity to appoint Cruise’s gait as its killer feature. Alas, again, it was not meant to be. Wright cast Glen Powell, who does not even have one measly YouTube video compiling all his running (Tom, on the other hand…).
Still, I’m excited. Wright is on a roll—having directed six features, all of them good—and the original is a good production to remake, with lots to appreciate and plenty of room to improve. While the new one is technically a readaptation (the source material a Stephen King novel), the previous film will undoubtedly inform Wright’s direction. It’s one of those films that embodies that great point made by critic Andrew Sarris: “the throwaway pictures often become the enduring classics whereas the noble projects often survive only as sure-fire cures for insomnia.“
Nobody nods off during The Running Man. It’s very colourfully designed—with a cyberpunk pinball aesthetic clearly inspired by Blade Runner—and hits the ground, er, running. Wright will probably change the year the story’s set in, 2017, which, in this universe, is significantly further along in Donald Trump’s vision of a “great again” America, i.e. a police state separated into paramilitary zones and ruled with an iron fist. The title is the name of a reality TV show in which criminals attempt to survive the wrath of violent gladiatorial muttonheads, wielding various intimidating instruments.
After taking a moral stand in the opening reels, refusing to open fire on an unarmed crowd of hungry protesters, Schwarzenegger’s protagonist Captain Ben Richards is thrown into the gulag, framed for the very crime he resisted. After escaping from jail he becomes a contestant on the show, which is run by a maniacal host and producer (Richard Dawson) perhaps inspired by Faye Dunaway’s “anything for ratings” character in Network. About 40 minutes in, Richards is dropped into “the game zone,” where he starts dispatching opponents and tossing out one-liners.
The first obvious thing to improve? Schwarzenegger’s dreadful performance. He has no dramatic weight, and every second line lands with a clang. The bulky star exclaims at one point, “I am framed! I am completely innocent!” And, urgh, you don’t believe it for a second; Arnie’s delivery is one great big immersion-breaker. (Although he does fare a little better when he turns to the producer and snarls, “I’ll be back.” Maybe we’ve heard that line before?) It’s true that Schwarzenegger provides some hammy charm, and hey, I’m an Arnie fan. But even in the so-bad-it’s-good realm, this performance is a real fizzer. It’ll be interesting to see whether Powell plays it straight or (as Arnie does) winks at the audience.
What does work—and what I hope Wright preserves—is the film’s grungy, colour-splattered aesthetic: grimy and industrial, like a corporate dream gone bad. Hopefully Wright retains that look of “real” artificiality, borne from an era of actual sets and scaffolding, and zero CGI. And hopefully he makes the action scenes really pop. They’re decent in the original, but have a closed-in, restricted sense of space, emphasising the performers but pulling back from the detail and spectacle of the wider world. Perhaps also the narrative could be a little more fluid: the original feels more like a collection of set pieces than a satisfying narrative per se.
And perhaps…they could reshoot the whole thing, and recast it with Tom Cruise as the lead? A man can dream, right?
