“I like my bacon extra crispy!”

The Running Man is Edgar Wright’s latest film and is an adaptation of the novel of the same name written by Stephen King. This is a much more faithful adaptation than the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, to the best of my knowledge, and is about a man who is just trying to save his sick daughter and, overall, rescue his family by entering this game show where he must survive for thirty days while being hunted—a strong emotional hook with a cool premise behind it. This is definitely both the most and least interesting movie that Edgar Wright has directed, though, as it is the one that feels the most “not him." Not to say that necessarily means the film is bad, but it just lacks a sense of style like his other movies. I see why it is hitting with most audiences, though.

Glen Powell is such a good lead as the main character, Ben Richards. When I first heard that he was starring in this new adaptation, I was a little puzzled because, obviously, Glen Powell and Arnold Schwarzenegger are very different actors. However, after hearing that this was going to be a more faithful adaptation of King’s novel, that confusion went away. He's easy to root for both because of his love for his family and his charm, while also being a little crazy at the same time. I’m glad to see him breaking out a little bit more and more with each new film he’s been in since Top Gun: Maverick.

The action is such a blast from start to finish and is full of so much fun and energy. It has a lot of humor to it that makes it really exciting, such as the “I’ve got a grenade!” moment from the trailer. Not going to lie, I was hoping it was going to be more like Baby Driver, where it was both fun in its action but also intense, but it’s okay because this film still manages to be very entertaining nonetheless. It offers exciting new setpieces, stunts, and most of them appeared to me to be mostly practical, which is really cool. Obviously, the dystopian stuff probably wasn’t practical, but I mean everything else, such as the interiors and all that.

The Running Man also balances its action with its pacing really well, too, for the most part (I’ll get to that later). I was thoroughly entertained as the action never became too much, and it offered slower, buildup moments to hone in on the story and keep things moving. I would say that, for being two hours and thirteen minutes, it doesn't ever feel too long. I wasn’t ever paying much attention to the time or anything like that.

I absolutely dug the visuals, too. Not necessarily the cinematography, but the set pieces. I’m a lover of dystopian, futuristic-looking movies, such as ones like Blade Runner and The Terminator (this movie looks distinctly different from those, just to mention), and so I was pleasantly surprised to see the cool city design and landscapes, which I didn’t really get from the trailers. Everything was very convincing, too, CGI or not.

However, this version of The Running Man did let me down quite a bit. This was one of my more anticipated movies of the last quarter of the year, not just because it was an adaptation of a story written by Stephen King and directed by Edgar Wright, but also because of the trailers as well. The main thing I don’t know how to feel about in regards to this movie was its direction. Yes, it’s fun, but it feels like a rather generic action movie that’s trying to appeal to the biggest audience, while, for some reason, being rated R, when it absolutely could have been rated PG-13 if it wanted to.

Adding onto that, a downright negative I had was that there is just not much to take away from this movie because its themes are hardly explored. Whenever it does try to explore themes of corruption, greed, and the media, they feel forced in because that never seems like that’s what the story was about in the first place, and so they don’t have any emotional impact. Speaking of emotional impact, the story emotionally hooks you with its premise of Richards entering this game, or rather, competition, to save his family, but it kind of loses sight of that as the film goes on, until we get to the end. It overtly has to keep reminding us why he is in this in the first place, with visions of his family and what not.

And I have to be honest, I would have honestly given this a positive review if it weren’t for the third act; the third act completely falls apart in my eyes. This was why I said earlier that the pacing was good for the most part, because it really was until we got toward the end. It somewhat out of nowhere slows down to a crawl and, honestly, drags because of how overly complicated it became all of a sudden, and it's also way too long. This is when it most tries to explore its themes, mainly through the game show hosts and a new female character introduced, and as I already said, none of them work because the movie worked best as a simple action film with a simple, yet really enticing premise.

Edgar Wright’s adaptation of The Running Man is definitely far from being a bad movie; in fact, I very shortly contemplated upping my rating for it after I watched it, but settled for this score because, at the end of the day, its shallow emotional beats and really disappointing third act really hurt the movie for me.