Looking back at the ’80s, it’s hard to comprehend now not just how big a movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger was in those days but how much he contributed to genre cinema. Beginning with 1982’s Conan the Barbarian, the decade gave him an exceptional run, taking in action, sci-fi and even comedy, pairing with Danny DeVito for 1988’s Twins. Somehow, he managed to fit the original The Running man in between launching the Predator franchise and crossing the iron Curtain for the cop caper Red Heat. Schwarzenegger was certainly shrewd in his choice of directors, too, working with the likes of James Cameron, Walter Hill and John McTiernan – and if first choice Andrew Davis hadn’t been fired, in favor of safe-pair-of-hands Paul Michael Glaser (aka TV’s Dave Starsky), perhaps The Running Man would be a bit more fondly remembered than it is.
Liberally adapted from Stephen King’s novel,which he published as Richard Bachman,the original Running Man was a mild but still,for its time,effective satire on consumer culture and,like the book,eerily prefigured reality television and its ongoing race to the bottom. Paul Verhoeven – whose savagely funny RoboCop came out the same year and was picked by Schwarzenegger to direct 1990’s Total Recall – would have been a much better fit, and with this impressively muscular reboot, one senses that Edgar Wright thinks so too.
Looking back at the original, Wright’s film often seems more like a restoration project than a remake, to the extent that the director has taken a bold step away from the quaint comedy that peppers his British movies. In its place is something a little more anarchic and, at times, even quite angry, and the timing for its US release couldn’t be better. Like the book, it begins in a dystopian future, in the aptly named slumside, where fiery blue-collar worker Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is fighting for severance pay after being fired for sticking up for a colleague.Powell’s baby is sick with the flu, but health insurance costs are through the roof, and Powell simply can’t afford the rudimentary treatment the child needs.
Desperate times require desperate measures, and so Richards turns to The Running Man, one of manny shows run by the sinister Network corporation, a multi-tentacled organization that, ultimately, controls everything. The Network’s shows exploit the massive gulf between the haves and the have-nots (“We’ve got the cash, if you’ve got the balls”), but The Running Man, hosted by the wildly charismatic Bobby T. (Colman Domingo) is the daddy. Given a head start, contestants have to survive for 30 days, checking in every 24 hours and pursued by five armed and deadly hunters who are never short of tip-offs from the public.