Director Edgar Wright

Starring Glen Powell, Josh Brolin & Colman Domingo

Rated MA

Score 3.5/6

A man joins a game show in which contestants, allowed to flee anywhere in the world, are pursued by “hunters” hired to kill them.

I skipped this one at the cinema because of my own personal brand of procrastination and have been hanging out to watch it for the past few weeks. Do I feel guilty about skipping this at the cinema? No. In the past Edgar Wright has clearly shown that he’s a talented director and it was great seeing a plot closer to the 1982 novel (published under Stephen King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman) being used. I felt that Wright didn’t succeed in delivering a grimey, lived in vision of a dystopian America. I found that I got a kick out of the performances of Michael Cera as Elton Parrakis & Daniel Ezra as Bradley Throckmorton. Glenn Powell is starting to feel that he has what it takes to be a solid leading man. Though it probably wouldn’t have happened part of me would have liked to have seen more screen time given to Katy O’Brian who portrayed Jenni Laughlin. The characters of Ben Richards and Jenni Laughlin almost seemed to be cut from the same cloth. The cynic in me says that they were interchangeable. I’d like to think that wouldn’t be the case if O’Brian’s character was given a tiny bit more character development. I was a little disappointed that the character of Damon Killian was split in two (portrayed by Richard Dawson in the 1987 version) with Josh Brolin as Dan Killian, the producer of The Running Man and Colman Domingo as Bobby “Bobby T” Thompson, the host. Brolin was menacing in a different than Richard Dawson was. Dawson’s portrayal of the Killian character was more two faced. I felt that Brolin managed to steal a few scenes from Powell.