There’s an insistent bouncy quality to the dystopian thriller “The Running Man,” an up-tempo beat. The time is the near future, and the place is fascist America, where the wealthy live in a heavily fortified alternative reality. On the other side of the divide, the destitute struggle among the ruins. For the downtrodden like Ben Richards — played by the irrepressibly charming Glen Powell — it’s a harsh, brutal existence filled with privation, grim lighting, dangerous jobs and lots of screens. That’s because the power that’s running things is a corporation called the Network, and it has effectively turned the country into a reality TV show.
That sounds a little too on the newsy nose, but the movie is based on a 1982 novel (set in 2025, ahem) of the same title by Stephen King with a freaky, fiendishly great premise: The Network maintains control partly through its bread-and-circus shows, including the deadly elimination game called “The Running Man.” Published under King’s pen name Richard Bachman, the novel was turned into an agreeably crude 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that was directed by Paul Michael Glaser and featured acres of spandex, paper cutouts for characters, primitive special effects and sloppy action sequences. (Glaser played Starsky, a cop with a dry-look blowout and a white-belted sweater, in the 1970s show “Starsky & Hutch.”)
The director Edgar Wright (“Baby Driver”) sticks closer to King’s original in the new “Running Man.” Written by Wright and Michael Bacall, this version restores Ben’s family, making him the loving husband to a loving wife (Jayme Lawson) and the father of a dangerously unwell toddler. The baby needs medicine that the family can’t afford, which forces Ben out of the door and into the affluent zone, and just in time, too, because the family scenes are awkward and devoid of an ounce of persuasive feeling. Things improve once Ben voyages over to the dark side and enters its locus of authoritarian power in a tower topped by a distinct, fiery bright red letter “N,” a logo that can’t help but bring to mind Netflix.
Wright doesn’t do anything with this teasingly funny detail other than toss it into a busy, brisk story that, once its Manichaean perimeters have been set and the needed introductions made, takes off like a shot. Ben, having walked into the Network tower hoping to score big on one of its shows, is soon selected for the one he promised his wife he would avoid. That’s bad for him and scary for her. It is, however, good for the audience because Wright, like many filmmakers, is fond of his villains, and he evidently enjoyed conceptualizing and populating the authoritarian realm, with its pyrotechnics, popping color, thuggish minions, decorative beauties and two reliable, nicely matched show boaters: Josh Brolin and Colman Domingo.
Brolin plays Dan Killian, the Network overlord, a devourer of people with big teeth and an insatiable smile; Domingo has the equally flashy role of Bobby T, the exuberant host of “The Running Man.” They show up now and again during the game, amid flashbacks, sprints, feints and more characters. The game itself dominates, and is a lethal challenge. For 30 days, three contestants try to escape death from both a posse of so-called Hunters and eager, trigger-happy normies. That Ben is the front-runner is clear from Powell’s star billing and his status as the resident Everyman, even if his lapidary muscles suggest that he puts in more time at a gym than in a factory. Whatever! Ben is built to win, which Wright, a filmmaker who aims to please, underscores with slavering attention to his star’s bare torso.
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