Film Review - The Running Man (2025)

The Running Man is based off of the Stephen King story and is also the new film by Edgar Wright, the story concerns Ben Richards (Glen Powell) who has been blacklisted from being hired for a job after an incident with his previous employment and needs money to care for his sick daughter so he auditions for a TV show called the Running Man which is produced by Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) and hosted by Bobby T (Colman Domingo) and Richards has to hide for 30 days from the Network and the Public who win prizes for Dobbing him into the show before he can win the grand prize of a billion dollars and that will not be easy.

I love Edgar Wright as a filmmaker I really do but outside of the Cornetto series he made with Simon Pegg I haven’t loved the movies he’s made and going into Running Man that feeling kept coming back but could Edgar run from that problem or would be the one he can never really escape from.

Well it’s a bit of both as I did have a good time at this movie until its ending but before I go more into that I will go into what does work and first off Wright’s direction is as tight and solid as ever, he’s clearly going for a Paul Verhoeven esque feeling of the future that you saw in his Sci-fi films like Robocop and Starship Troopers and if anyone can replicate that style well enough it is Edgar and he does so pretty well, the editing by Paul Machliss is good as well keeping the pace nice and tight wherever possible while also knowing when to slow things down.

And the cast are pretty good too, Glen Powell makes for an effective leading man and you want to see him succeed in the Running Man game, Josh Brolin and Colman Domingo are a lot of fun as the producer and host behind the show while Katy O’Brian is fun in a small role and Michael Cera reunites with Edgar Wright after working with him on Scott Pilgrim and has a fun if brief role.

But where this film does fall down is its ending because it really feels like it comes right out of nowhere in the worst possible way and I sat there in my seat going “what the fuck” and after that point the film really lost me and I’m someone who will defend the ending of Last Night in Soho because at least I pegged early on in that film that that was kind of coming even if the film crash lands getting to that point but here no such luck as it just derailed the whole experience for me.

And so that was the Running Man and until the ending it’s a good solid time that is far from Edgar Wright’s best, 2 and a half out of 5.