The Running Man

Action! Blood! Yellow jumpsuits! Occupying that sweet spot in the 1980s when Arnold Schwarzenegger was an unstoppable killing machine mocking his enemies with eye-rolling one-liners (“Here is Sub Zero! Now, plain zero!”) 1987’s The Running Man is the rare movie where a movie has almost nothing to do with the book it’s based on and I’m okay with that.

Set in the distant future of…wait for it…2019…Schwarzenegger stars as Ben Richards, a cop  sent to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Richards escapes with the help of other criminals and attempts to reunite with his brother. This turns to be his downfall, as his brother’s old apartment is now occupied by Amber (Maria Conchita Alonso), who turns Richards in when Richards tried to escape to Hawaii. Meanwhile, Richards’ prison breaks gets the attention of Killian (Richard Dawson), game-show host of the most popular show on TV, The Running Man, where convicted criminals meet their fate at the hands of the Stalkers, including hockey maniac Sub Zero (Toru Takana), flamethrower-weilding Fireball (Jim Brown) or old-school Stalker Captain Freedom (Jesse Ventura). With the help of resistance fighters, lead by Mic (Mick Fleetwood), Richards and his friends must fight their way out to survive.

Call it a proto-Truman Show where the main character is in a game show for his life, The Running Man manages to paint an eerie picture of the future. While society hasn’t reached the level of killing losing contestants on its game shows, we do sometimes put them through extremes, as Survivor, Fear Factor, or The Chair can attest. The Running Man got some parts of the future right (automatic lights and coffee makers), while sometimes the future looks horribly dated (storing video footage on a floppy disk). And don’t get me started on the costumes; everyone in the audience looks straight out of 1987.

Based on a Stephen King novella, The Running Man made this list of top 20 King film adaptations despite having almost nothing to do with the source material (which it shares with the awful Pierce Brosnan VR movie The Lawnmower Man, a movie so loosely adapted King tok his name off the credits). King’s 1982 paperback original was written in a week and published under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. (Bachman, not King, is credited as the author in the film as well). The Running Man novella is a darker, grittier, more serious affair. The game show takes place in the streets of New England instead of a self-contained arena. Richards, Killian, and Laughlin exist, but with different personas than they have in the movie. And in the novella, there’s nary an opera-singing, electric mohawked killer to be found.

The extreme departure the movie takes from the novella works, for the most part. The movie retains the overall theme: America is a desolate place and people enjoy watching bloodsport. The Running Man then becomes a modern take on the Roman colosseum, with lions replaced by flamethrower-weilding ex-fotball players. Much like the pre-MCU Punisher, The Running Man succeeds despite of (or because of) it’s cheese factor. Richard Dawson chews through every scene he’s in, and casting the former host of The Family Feud as the smarmiest game-show host to ever grace the stage remains the best meta-casting ever. It’s easy to take the meta of The Running Man further, and be amused by the stereotypical casting of former pro wrestlers Ventura and Tanaka as Stalkers (whose kills are sometimes real and sometimes faked) or musicians Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa as revolutionaries. As much as Ben Richards was an Everyman in the novella, that aspect of his personality went out the window with the casting of Schwarzenegger, the only man I know who could inspire fear while wearing skintight Lycra.

While some aspects of its future seem dated today, The Running Man remains prescient enough to be watchable and entertaining. Schwarzenegger and Dawson make great enemies, and the movie’s over-the-top nature is perfect for Sunday-afternoon viewing.

tl;drs

Quick summary: Set in the rapidly approaching future, Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger) is framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and must compete in America’s most notorious game show, The Running Man, where contestants must kill or be killed in order to survive.

Too many writers? One screenwriter only, Steven E. de Souza, but his credits don’t fill me with confidence. Besides The Running Man, he’s written some other gems, like The Flintstones, Beverly Hills Cop III, and Street Fighter.

Recommended if you like: Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura continuing the bro-down they began in Predator.

Better than I expected? The casting is kind of crazy; the movie is a love fest between wrestlers (Ventura, Tanaka) and musicians (Fleetwood, Zappa).

Worse than I hoped? So many shoulder pads; it’s hard to take 2019 seriously when so much of it looks like 1983.

Would it work better in a different medium? Not really; a TV show would get tiring real quickly. I wouldn’t mind a remake though.

Verdict: Anachronisms aside (we’re still using VCRs in 2019, are we?) the film remains a fun look at dystopia, sort of like a bloodsport Truman Show.

Related Reading: Stephen King’s The Running Man Was a Film Ahead of Its Time at Den of Geek