The Running Man

The Running Man stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, and is set in a fictional, futuristic (2017) United States that has suffered a complete economic collapse, and is now ruled by a totalitarian government that controls, manipulates and censors all forms of art and entertainment in order to control the population.

One of the governments’ propaganda TV shows is called “The Running Man”, where convicted criminals can be freed by “winning" a lethal competition, where they are thrown into an obstacle course, created from an abandoned area of California, and have to literally run for their lives across four city blocks, which are completely abandoned and consist of nothing but rubble and ruins.

The object of the show is to outrun the “stalkers”, assassins employed by the TV show, who try to hunt down and kill the competitors. If the competitors can reach the end of the course without being killed, they “win” the competition, and their freedom.

One of these competitors is Ben Richards, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who enters "The Running Man” show, and has to run for his life.

The film is based on the 1982 novel of the same name by Stephen King, writing under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman.

The screenplay was written by Steven E. De Souza, and it was directed by Paul Michael Glaser.

While I have not read the original novel, it seems to be a more serious drama that contains socio-political commentary, unlike the film, which, while it does reference the fact that the show is owned by the state as a way of controlling the population, the film focuses more on the manipulation of the facts by the media and entertainment industry, in order to increase viewership and ratings.

I quite enjoyed The Running Man, and found it to be a solid and enjoyable 1980’s Schwarzenegger action flick.

The main set of the film is the game show stage, and this certainly looks like an 80’s version of what a futuristic game show stage might look like. There are neon lights and dancing girls (the dance movements were all choreographed by Paula Abdul), wearing very ’80’s aerobic leotards, with typical ’80’s hairstyles, even though this was supposed to be set in 2017.

As an aside, I always find it funny that any movie or TV show that’s set in a future time period, always has the cast wearing whatever the current hairstyles are, from the time period it was made.

For example, if a film was made in the 1920’s, but was set in the far future, everyone still had 1920’s hairstyles. It’s especially noticeable in films made in the ’60’s, ’70’s, ’80’s and even into the ’90’s.

With each new decade, the hair and clothing trendsetters went out of their way to create a style that was completely different from what had come the decade before.

This all stopped around the year 2000, when all of a sudden, most clothing and hairstyles kind of stagnated, and haven’t really changed all that much since.

Over the last 25 years, apart from some technological “advancements”, like iPhones, it can sometimes be hard to tell exactly what decade a movie was made.

Speaking of style, I can’t decide whether the yellow and grey jumpsuits for the competitors in The Running Man are great or cheesy, maybe a little of both.

In fact, the entire film is a combination of both these things. The action scenes are great, with plenty of guns, chainsaws, electrical surges and flamethrowers.

They throw just about everything but the kitchen sink at Arnold, and he handles it all in typical Arnold style, complete with cheesy one liners.

The cheesiest, and most cringe-inducing being the recycling of “I’ll be back!”, which was getting old, even back then.

The character names for the “stalkers” were also great, and basically described what they did, or what kind of weapons they used. Names like Dynamo, Fireball, Buzzsaw, and Subzero (not the Mortal Kombat character), and Captain Freedom.

And speaking of Captain Freedom, Jesse Ventura as Captain Freedom was simply amazing!

He knew exactly what kind of film he was in, and being a wrestler in the WWE (or was it still the WWF at that time?), he also knew exactly what kind of performance he needed to give, and he absolutely delivered!

The performances by the rest of the cast were all pretty good. Yaphet Kotto and Maria Conchita Alonso were both especially solid.

The production, however was not without it’s problems, with the director Paul Michael Glaser initially passing on directing the film, because he felt like there wasn’t enough pre-production time.

The studio then hired Andrew Davis, who was fired after two weeks because the production fell behind by a week, and so Glaser was approached again, and this time he accepted.

The original idea for the film was to stay closer to the novel, where Ben Richards is unemployed, his daughter is ill, and his wife has to resort to prostitution to help make ends meet, and so Ben decides to appear on “The Running Man” show for the chance to win over $1 billion (yes, billion with a B) in prize money plus more if he wins.

At one point, Christopher Reeve was going to play the Ben Richards character, but obviously things changed, as they tend to in Hollywood, and it became an Arnold Schwarzenegger action film instead.

It has just recently been announced that a new reboot of The Running Man is going to be made starring Glen Powell and directed by Edgar Wright. This version is apparently going to stay closer to the original novel. It will definitely be interesting to see how it compares to the Schwarzenegger version.

All in all, The Running Man is a solid and entertaining action film.

The whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts, and if you enjoy the other Schwarzenegger films from the 1980’s, then The Running Man is definitely worth a watch.

I recommend it.