The Running Man Review: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Colman Domingo's Film Is A Smart, Stylish & Slightly Self-Satisfied Dystopia

Title: The Running Man

Director: Edgar Wright

Cast: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Sean Hayes, Katy O’Brian.

Where: In theatres near you

Rating: 3 Stars

Edgar Wright’s The Running Man sprints through dystopia with caffeinated conviction, turning Stephen King’s bleak parable into a slick, hyperactive spectacle of our surveillance-saturated age. Wright’s version hews closer to King’s grim novel than the 1987 camp classic, trading quips for cultural critique.

The film imagines a world where entertainment and execution have become indistinguishable, and the only prize for integrity is a billion-dollar bounty. Wright’s direction is a gleaming, frantic blend of satire and spectacle. A game show where the prize is survival, and the cost is one’s soul.

Beneath the neon shimmer and visual gymnastics lies a pointed commentary on how the media turns rebellion into ratings, dissent into digestible drama, and class frustration into televised catharsis. Yet, amid the sensory overload, Wright occasionally forgets to breathe, leaving audiences dizzy rather than disturbed.

The breathless second act, packed with ideas and chases, risks blurring its own message. The result is a film that is thrilling, clever, and a touch too pleased with its own velocity.

Actors’ Performance

Glen Powell anchors the chaos with charm and grit, proving that action heroes don’t need to scowl their way through the apocalypse. His Ben Richards, a construction worker turned reluctant gladiator, balances vulnerability with vengeance. There’s both a pulse and a punch to his performance, making him one of Wright’s most grounded protagonists yet.

Josh Brolin chews through corporate sleaze as the game’s Machiavellian showrunner, Dan Killian, his grin weaponised for ratings. Colman Domingo’s flamboyant host, Bobby T, glides through moral decay with a gospel of greed, and Michael Cera, ever the oddball, provides absurd levity.

Supporting turns from William H. Macy and Emilia Jones add texture, though they’re fleeting presences in a film that rarely pauses to let its characters catch up with its pace.

Music and Aesthetics

Wright’s visual vocabulary is unmistakable: kinetic cuts, pop-infused rhythm, and meticulously staged mayhem. Yet here, his usual comic syncopation is traded for industrial thrum and dystopian dazzle. Gone is the winking irreverence of Baby Driver or Hot Fuzz. This is Wright in somber, statement-making mode.

The production design, a fusion of Blade Runner grit and influencer-era gloss, renders a world where even despair is branded. Drones hum like mosquitoes, screens never blink, and every skyscraper screams an ad for the empire that enslaves its citizens.

Composer Steven Price matches this with a propulsive score that teeters between adrenaline and irony. It is stylish, yes, but at times the film seems too enamoured with its own machinery, as if the director were also trapped inside the system he critiques. Still, the sheer craft of it all, the neon noir sheen and the seamless blend of practical and digital effects make for a visual buffet.

Final Verdict

The Running Man hurtles forward on ambition and adrenaline, its critique of media control gleaming beneath Wright’s hypnotic spectacle. Visually arresting but emotionally distant, it dazzles more than it disturbs. A stylish, self-aware dystopia that almost outruns its own ideas.