Gal Gadot takes a mighty stumble in the unimaginative thriller “The Runner.” She stars as Maia Marten, a single mother and prosecutor who receives a call from a mysterious kidnapper telling her that he has taken her diabetic son (Rory Wilmot) hostage. The caller, who works for a crime boss implicated in a double homicide, wants Maia to assassinate the trial’s star witness. We have already sprinted a long way from the joys of Gadot’s “Wonder Woman.”
The director Kevin Macdonald masks Gadot’s actorly inadequacies with lens flares, crash zooms and motion blur, a style that often recalls “Run Lola Run” (1999). But the didactic script by Mark Gibson deflates the intended freneticism. Though Maia has an hour to run five miles across London to meet her mark before her son loses his life, the caller spends it coaxing her via Bluetooth to remember her tragic back story as she navigates unpredictable traffic and inattentive bystanders staring at their phones. Both Maia and the caller make snide comments about life on screens and the surveillance state, but they have nothing grander to say about either topic.
The two heart-pounding sequences in which Maia must outrun a train inject some extra life because they’re so absurd yet stylish, relying on energetic cutting and percussive needle drops for a cool 1990s cinematic vibe. But “The Runner” is too self-serious to maintain that pace, needlessly tripping over itself before it ever gets started.
The Runner Rated PG-13 for violent content and bloody images, some sexual material, strong language and a drug reference. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video.
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