The Running Man 2025
B-
This movie didn't get stellar reviews and did not meet box office expectations, but it seemed like a harmless enough movie and I even watched the original to get ready. My understanding is that this version would follow the book closer than the original did, so I hoped it would be better than the kind of silly first one. And it certainly starts off that way as Glen Powell enters this this contest where you either survive for 30 days and win the jackpot or you are hunted down and killed. So far, nobody has won the jackpot, so every contestant dies. Powell is good as a scrappy and smart guy who is just trying to help his family. He has to pretty much carry the movie as he is chased and then runs into people here and there that try to help him or kill him. In the second half of the movie things get a little more ridiculous and messed up by the own workings of the plot (see spoilers below if you dare), so in the end I can only give it a B.
spoilers
The stuff I didn't like was that there was no way anyone would know Ben Richards is a good guy because the game show manipulates all of the footage and story. And yet somehow he still becomes a folk hero of sorts? Then he doesn't know if they have really protected or killed his family. When everything can be faked, how can you have a plot? And he's wearing this communication device on his wrist but just expects them to be honest and not to determine his location from it? He is supposedly going to pre-record his daily video clip, but then that never happens, meaning they will know whatever town he is sending the package from. He is given teammates at the beginning but they get no development whatsoever and are fairly quickly killed. Towards the end he just walks up to the people hunting them counting on them not to kill him even though they have been trying to kill him the whole time. It stops making any sense. It is a pretty dark movie, honestly, with a huge body count, but then a sort of happy ending is tacked on clumsily and it isn't at all clear that the Glen Powell's character will ever be anything but a wanted fugitive, especially after shooting an unarmed person in cold blood.
Written: 18 Nov 2025