THE RUNNING MAN 😊

PREMISE

A man joins a game show in which contestants, allowed to flee anywhere in the world, are pursued by “hunters” hired to kill them.

THE GOOD STUFF

GLENN POWELL- Whenever there is an action movie that has a 1990s kind of vibe to it, I feel that I’ve done my job in pointing it out whenever it has occurred on this website. That being said, there’s a very 1990s kind of action feel to the running man. Being a child of the 90s, I am very aware of the kind of leading performance it takes to pull off a movie like this as a star vehicle. The performance of Glenn Powell in this movie is so accurate to the kind of leading performances that I grew up watching as a young man, that I honestly feel he may have studied that particular time period to present this character as the gruff but lovable, angry yet affable, violent yet tender hearted family man kind of badass that is littered throughout the decade of the ’90s.

In lesser hands, the role of Ben Richards wouldn’t be as fun or as interesting. As opposed to his starring role in twisters, he is in every single scene in this film, and his presence is never unwelcome. In lesser hands, this performance would more than likely be compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s in the original 1987 movie, even though this film is markedly different from that one. This is not as cheesy a performance as you would get in the 1990s, but it’s close….

COLMAN DOMINGO- ….THIS performance, however, is full-blown cheese. The kind of comedically overdone histrionics that this kind of movie needs. Without this performance, you could justifiably say that this movie is taking itself way too seriously. Domingo isn’t on screen a whole bunch, but often we get these moments of narration from him in vital parts of the action that are just…Velveeta enough to generate big laughs in the audience that I saw this movie with. They say comedy is at its funniest when a performer is delivering the comedy as seriously as they possibly can. That is what Domingo is doing in this film. He completely understood the job.

ACT 1 & ACT 2- The first hour and 15 minutes or so of this film is so entertaining on so many levels. The action is simply done, not overly reliant on CGI or special effects, and it’s wonderful R-rated violence. It looks great, has a lot of humor, and sets up the game rules so it’s not confusing what the character has to do to keep getting money. This movie does a great job of portraying the protagonist’s mission as absolutely impossible, leaving you wondering how he’s going to get out of the situations he’s been set up in. The bad guys have been set up to seem absolutely indomitable, and the pacing is so great that it makes bathroom breaks seem risky to take, in case you miss something vital.

This is absolutely the biggest movie that Edgar Wright has ever done in terms of the scope of things, and he may be one of the most underappreciated directors in the game.

THE BAD STUFF

ACT 3- For all of the buildup that is done in the first and second acts, it leads to a third act that is very underwhelming, both in terms of action, dialogue, and story. The one thing this film does not do very well is portray hand-to-hand combat. There’s a lot of quick cutting happening, a lot of kinetic energy where it didn’t need to be, and in all honesty, the whole plane sequence in the 3rd act towards the end felt like a bit of a cop out to lead to the final scene… which is underwhelming in and of itself.

I do feel that this movie wanted to make a bit of a statement about how damaging technology can be in manipulating an audience, but it falls flat on that point. The motives of the main antagonists in this section of the movie are perplexing, given the events in the first two Acts. This is a movie that very much deserved to end on a crescendo, but sadly, it does not. It’s not terribly done or anything, but at 2 hours and 10 minutes, why not add another five or six minutes to give it the proper epilogue it needed?

THE UGLY STUFF

Aside from the lack of Josh Brolin, there are no complaints here.

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There’s been a very noticeable push to make Glen Powell one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, if not the biggest. It’s the same kind of push that we saw for men like Sam Worthington, Zac Efron, Taylor Kitsch, Jai Courtney, Armie Hammer, and others. Men who had their breakout in a big movie that they didn’t star in, and were given huge star vehicles to test if they were ready to get to the Tom Cruise level of movie stardom. More than any of the men that I just mentioned, Powell has “it”. There’s always been a question about exactly what the criteria for the “it factor” truly is, and THE RUNNING Man is a movie that highlights all of it in its main star.

Versatility, screen presence, the ability to not get dwarfed when surrounded by Oscar nominees or actors who have a cult following themselves, the ability to display an every man kind of vibe while having the unattainable looks of a movie star, and most importantly the ability to carry a big loud expensive action movie well enough to look forward to the next one that he’s in. Amidst all the aggressive pushes that have gone to actors that didn’t pan out, this should feel different. You could see it in twisters, but it shines fluorescently in THE RUNNING Man.

THE RUNNING MAN is in theaters now