A good movie

I always had mixed feelings about Edgar Wright’s work but ‘The Running Man’ is such a cool concept and I was really eager to see a modern remake, especially since the version starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (a guilty pleasure of mine when I was a kid) was not really satisfying. By the way, with ‘The Long Walk’, it was the 2nd adaptation of a Richard Bachman novel (a pseudonym used by Stephen King) dealing with a lethal game released in 2025. Well, even though I really enjoyed ‘The Long Walk’, this new adaptation of a King’s book didn’t completely convince me. First of all, Wright tried to go for a slightly unhinged tone which would have been perfect for this material but, to be honest, he didn’t really nail it though. However, Glen Powell was a perfect choice to play the lead and the guy was pretty much pitch-perfect. I wish they also went for a more heightened vision of the future, something more similar to ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘The Fifth Element’ for example. Finally, the whole thing worked really well up until this hostel was completely blown up in Boston. It was indeed a marvelously entertaining scene which perfectly encapsulated what the movie was supposed to be. Unfortunately, after the main character survived this ordeal, the whole thing lost some steam. Basically, from this point, the story relied too much on the main character encountering some random strangers to help him survive. Seriously, the first one was probably the worst. Sure, I can believe that some people would try to help him (in fact, very little people tried to hunt him down after all which was also rather disappointing) but the very first one he ran into turned out to be some kind of Running Man expert? Wow, that was really mighty convenient… And then, the next one turned out to be Scott Pilgrim, I mean, Micheal Cera acting well really weird with his own agenda which only half-worked. The last encounter with Emilia Jones’s character was the most effective one but, to be honest, changing this lethal survival game into some kind of road-trip was rather underwhelming. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still love the concept, Glen Powell was pretty awesome so I think it is worth a look but it was far for being the ultimate adaptation I was hoping for.

7/10