Rent The Running Man (2025)

The Jogging Man - The Running Man review by griggs

I was hoping Edgar Wright’s The Running Man would be the feral media satire of my dreams; instead it’s mostly a brisk jog. Sticking closer to the Bachman novel and throwing in AI deepfakes is bang on for 2025, but it never feels as nasty or unsettling as the premise promises. When the show can fake reality so easily, the whole “real people really running” thing starts to look a bit daft.

On the surface it’s classic Wright: punchy chases, scruffy punk rebel ’zines, and a soundtrack crate-dug within an inch of its life. But excellent needle drops alone do not a good movie make. Glen Powell is a likeable lead, Colman Domingo and Josh Brolin chew the scenery, yet the satire stays soft. Michael Cera’s Home Alone pastiche is the highlight – a deranged little detour that briefly shows how sharp this could have been. The rest is fun in the moment, but it evaporates on the way out of the cinema.

Garbage - The Running Man review by cr

Easily one of the worst films i have ever seen. Only watched it out of nostalgia for the arnie version which i liked.

This however is awful.

Our hero has a sick child and no money so is forced into a lucrative but deadly game show run by crazy tv media types who we have all seen before.

I am still not sure whether the tone they were going for was humour, irony or satire but it failed on all 3.

Veering from attempted action to soppy sentimentality to cringeworthy jive talk with the black characters that would make huggy bear blush. Its also far too long.

At one point glenn, even though he is being chased by humans and AI decides to take a shower, gets the smallest and thinnest bath towel and strolls around the hotel.

Would you beleive it that he ends up on a window ledge and chucks the towel off!? No me neither.

This lost a load of money at the box office and its easy to see why but oddly and as usual decent reviews from the critics!!

The reason why these films loose money is because they are rubbish. Wake up hollywood!!

Avoid.

Ridiculous, clichéd, boring… - The Running Man review by Alphaville

In a futuristic game show, our clichéd hero, whose only redeeming feature is that he loves his family (yawn), has to avoid being killed by professional assassins-who-can’t-shoot-straight for 30 days. It takes the film half an hour to get to this point. When the month begins, in front of an audience baying for blood (naturally), you’d think he’d just go and hide. Instead he books into a hotel. Do you think the assassins will find him? Do you think any of their bullets will hit him? With action scenes over-edited to shreds, the whole shebang is a mess from start to finish.