The Running Man Review: Not Squid Game-like, Glen Powell Owns This Ruthless Reinvention

The Running Man

In theaters now

Cast: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, Jayme Lawson, Lee Pace & more

Directed by: Edgar Wright

Rating - ***1/2 (3.5/5)

Stephen King once wrote nightmares that crawled into our bedrooms. Now his story comes alive in a world where fear is packaged as entertainment. The Running Man is not about ghosts or killers lurking in the dark. It is about a society that treats death as prime-time spectacle and how one man’s desperation becomes the world’s obsession.

Adapted by Edgar Wright from King’s 1982 novel, the story already has a cinematic history. The 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger turned it into a campy action cult. This new version reclaims the idea and sharpens it for an age where real pain can trend before a coffee break. Wright gives it style, Powell gives it soul, and together they build a story that feels disturbingly plausible.

Welcome To The Game

The film imagines a near-future where the most watched television show is called The Running Man. Contestants, known as Runners, are hunted by professional assassins in a live broadcast that rewards survival with money and fame. The rules are simple: last thirty days, stay alive, and you can change your life forever.

Enter Ben Richards, played by Glen Powell, a factory worker barely surviving in a collapsing economy. When his daughter falls gravely ill and the medical bills pile up, he becomes easy prey for the show’s charismatic producer, Dan Killian, played with icy perfection by Josh Brolin.

Killian sells the dream of fortune but delivers a contract soaked in blood. What begins as a desperate father’s last resort soon becomes a moral war between human dignity and televised cruelty.

A Story About The Price Of Survival

Beneath its flashy setup, The Running Man is a story about what happens when survival becomes entertainment. Ben’s decision to join the show is not heroic. It is instinctive, born from exhaustion and love. Powell captures that internal conflict beautifully. His performance is not built on physical strength alone but emotional fatigue. You see a man who has stopped believing the system can help him, so he chooses to play within it.

The film uses his journey to question how much pain a person can endure when survival is the only reward left. Every time Ben runs, he is not just escaping the Hunters but also the guilt of knowing he is playing into the very machinery that thrives on his misery.

Wright ensures that this moral weight never gets buried under the spectacle. It lingers in every close-up, in every glance toward the camera that films his suffering.

Dan Killian: The Devil With A Smile

Josh Brolin’s Dan Killian is not the kind of villain who twirls a mustache or throws tantrums. He is worse. He is logical. His calm makes your skin crawl. Brolin gives Killian an unnerving composure, the kind that only comes from believing he is right.

For him, The Running Man is not a game but a public service. He convinces himself that he gives ordinary people a choice, even if that choice leads to death.

Killian’s manipulation of Ben is masterful to watch. He studies him like a psychologist, not a producer. Every promise he makes has a hidden clause. When the ratings spike, he masks his greed as gratitude. His genius lies in how he transforms tragedy into performance art.

It is a performance that mirrors modern entertainment culture, where cruelty often wears the disguise of opportunity. Wright and Brolin craft Killian not as a caricature of evil but as a reflection of the industry’s darkest instincts.

The Audience As The Real Monster

One of the smartest things Wright does here is shift the spotlight onto the audience. The crowds cheering for Ben’s survival are not noble supporters. They are addicts.

They crave the thrill of danger but have no empathy for the man enduring it. The show thrives because people want to see how close he can come to dying without actually dying.

There are moments in the film where the camera cuts to viewers at home reacting to the broadcast. Some cry, some celebrate, most keep scrolling. It is disturbingly real. Wright exposes how spectatorship has evolved into silent complicity. We live in a culture that rewards visibility, even if it means humiliation.

The Running Man does not scold the viewer, but it certainly makes them uncomfortable. When Ben starts gaining sympathy, you are forced to ask whether you are rooting for his escape or his endurance.

Powell’s Magnetic Transformation

Glen Powell’s performance gives the film its emotional heartbeat. This is easily his most grounded work yet. There is an unrefined vulnerability in how he plays Ben Richards, a man who is constantly unsure whether he deserves to survive. Powell sheds his usual charm for something heavier.

His physicality is powerful, but it is his eyes that tell the story. You can see both anger and resignation colliding inside him.

Powell also makes Ben believable as a reluctant celebrity. As his popularity grows, you sense his discomfort with the fame he never asked for. He becomes aware that the people cheering him on are the same ones feeding the system he wants to destroy.

It is this tension between gratitude and disgust that gives his arc such complexity. He is not a hero in the traditional sense, but a man cornered into heroism by circumstance.

Wright Balances Mayhem With Humanity

Edgar Wright approaches the story with both restraint and flair. His signature rhythm is intact, from punchy editing to a soundtrack that feels like a pulse under the film’s surface. Yet, he surprises with how often he slows down to let emotions breathe.

The violence is stylized but never numbing. It feels choreographed to highlight desperation rather than glorify bloodshed.

The film’s middle portion does stumble with a slightly repetitive structure, but Wright regains command once the personal stakes sharpen. The final act is a symphony of chaos and clarity. When Ben finally turns the game on its creators, Wright captures it not as a grand revenge sequence but as liberation from collective numbness.

There is a small but significant moment near the end where Ben looks straight into the lens, and for a second, you feel like he is looking at you. That is Wright’s mastery at work.

A Cautionary Tale That Still Entertains

What makes The Running Man stand out is its ability to be thrilling without being mindless. The film is designed as entertainment, yet it constantly challenges your appetite for it. It asks whether the thrill is worth the moral cost. You might come for the action, but you stay for the discomfort it leaves behind.

The world Wright builds feels exaggerated yet eerily believable. The line between television and reality is already so blurred in our culture that this dystopia feels like tomorrow’s headline.

The film ends not with fireworks but with silence, as if forcing the audience to confront what they have witnessed. That silence is louder than any explosion.

The Verdict

The Running Man is not just another adaptation. It is a conversation about what we are willing to sacrifice for entertainment. Edgar Wright blends his cinematic energy with the psychological tension of King’s source material to create a film that is as gripping as it is reflective.

Glen Powell carries it with empathy and restraint, while Josh Brolin gives it moral depth through menace.

It is both a spectacle and a sermon, a thriller that dares to ask if the real horror lies not in the chase but in who is watching it. The Running Man leaves you entertained, disturbed, and strangely guilty for enjoying it all.