Audience RatedMini ReviewTheatrical ReleasesWoke-ish

The Running Man (2025)

The Running Man (2025) is a generic and underdeveloped remake that survives mostly on Glen Powell’s charisma and flashes of Edgar Wright’s style.
68238
Starring
Glenn Powell, Josh Brolin, Michael Cera
Director
Edgar Wright
Rating
R
Genre
Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Release date
Nov 7, 2025
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Story/Plot/Script
Visuals/Cinematography
Performance
Direction
Non-Wokeness
Rating Summary

In a fractured future gripped by media tyrants, everyman Ben Richards (Glen Powell) dives into the lethal lottery of “The Running Man,” chasing a fortune amid an endless and deadly pursuit. Shadows of deceit and desperate pacts ignite a chase that shatters illusions, hurtling toward chaos and uprising.

The Running Man (2025) REVIEW

The Running Man (2025) is a rare example in which toning down the source material's socio-political commentary in the hopes of pleasing everyone ends up pleasing no one. Painfully generic, with little to say and less to show, Glenn Powell's version lacks the personality of Schwarzenegger's campfest or the intended poignancy of Stephen King's original.

"Soulless" is the epithet that's been chasing 2025's it across the Twittersphere since its release last week. However, that's not an entirely fair assessment. Yes, it lacks a strong central ethos, and its (literally) faceless, interchangeable, and utterly mundane villains are underwhelming, but Glen Powell's charisma and clear passion for the project, as well as the occasional glimpses of Edgar Wright's style are just barely sufficient to cobble together enough entertaining moments to get you through to the end feeling, maybe not satisfied, but minimally entertained. It's not a theater-worthy flick, or even worth renting, but once The Running Man hits your preferred streaming service in a couple of months, it's probably worth a lazy Saturday afternoon watch.

As the film is rather empty otherwise, Glen Powell deserves most of what praise can be laid upon The Running Man. His Ben Richards might only be a grumpy character sketch, but Powell is one of a handful of actors working today who have the X-factor that would have launched him into superstardom just a few decades ago. Unfortunately, there just don't seem to be those behind the camera or in the writing room who have what it takes to craft fun and thoughtful action-adventure anymore. So, Powell keeps missing the mark by inches.

The Running Man is a moderately well-paced, tragically underdeveloped stock action flick that doesn't know what its overall message is, or what it wants to be when it grows up.

 

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James Carrick

James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.

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  1. Add To Basket November 14, 2025 at

    I was so hyped for this until I saw the trailer, typical black-washing and notice, all the fascist troops are white…..

    12
    1
    Reply
    1. Jim December 1, 2025 at

      That’s like the original Star Wars trilogy is woke because the empire is all white dudes.

      4
      Reply
  2. relict November 16, 2025 at

    It didn’t bother you that the strip clubs and casinos all had crosses hanging everywhere? Or that literally everyone who opposed the Network was a Communist?

    3
    Reply
    1. James Carrick November 16, 2025 at

      Thanks for the feedback. I honestly didn’t notice crosses in the casinos—just the one in Michael Cera’s character’s home. (And I actually think there’s something deliberate in the fact that he has to flip it upside down to escape the villains.)

      As for the idea that everyone who opposes the Network is a Communist, I didn’t read it that way. The film presents them as anti-authoritarian and anti-corporatocracy, not as adherents of any specific political ideology. If anything, the movie seemed more sharply aimed at corporate media—how it manipulates, pacifies, and profits off its audience—than at capitalism or communism as systems.

      I think it’s easy to project familiar (pro-commie) Hollywood tropes onto stories like this, especially since a lot of movies use similar imagery. But in this case, it felt more like a critique of concentrated media power than a coded political message.

      5
      Reply
  3. Jim December 1, 2025 at

    The movie has a macho hite male lead and didn’t have a single “girlboss” character, yet it’s a massive flop.

    1
    1
    Reply

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  1. Killer-Alien April 22, 2026 at Audience Review Edited
    Not Worth ItMostly WokeC+

    The movie seemed overly diverse for no other reason than to check boxes. If it’s based on the book, I’m curious to know if all those characters were as diverse as they were in the movie.

    See more reviews from Killer-Alien
    Reply

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This prevents two square // outputs or mismatched gallery states in the Share Options window. built = await buildShareImage(row, { force:true }); builtSquare = await buildShareSquareImage(row, built.cycle_image_url || '', built.poster_url || '', { force:true }); if (!built || !built.image_url) { throw new Error('Landscape share build failed.'); } if (!builtSquare || !builtSquare.image_url) { throw new Error('Square share build failed.'); } } else { built = await buildShareImage(row); } var shareUrl = built.share_url; var postUrl = (row.getAttribute('data-post-url') || '').trim() || shareUrl; var postTitle = (row.getAttribute('data-post-title') || '').trim(); if (!postTitle) postTitle = 'this'; var shareKind = (row.getAttribute('data-share-kind') || 'critics').trim().toLowerCase(); var upperTitle = postTitle.toUpperCase(); var lineTwo = (shareKind === 'audience' || shareKind === 'audience-teaser' || shareKind === 'audience-question') ? 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'Audience share options' : ((shareKind === 'ratings' || shareKind === 'ratings-admin' || shareKind === 'ratings-question') ? 'Ratings share options' : 'Critic share options'); window.__wiowLastShareOptionsContext = { row: row, heading: heading, win: previewWin }; var shown = renderShareOptionsWindow(previewWin, built.image_url, (builtSquare ? builtSquare.image_url : ''), shareUrl, heading); if (!shown) { var copied = false; if (navigator.clipboard && window.isSecureContext && navigator.clipboard.writeText){ try { await navigator.clipboard.writeText(shareUrl); copied = true; } catch (copyErr) {} } if (!copied) { var ta = document.createElement('textarea'); ta.value = shareUrl; ta.setAttribute('readonly', 'readonly'); ta.style.position = 'fixed'; ta.style.opacity = '0'; document.body.appendChild(ta); ta.focus(); ta.select(); ta.setSelectionRange(0, ta.value.length); copied = !!document.execCommand('copy'); ta.remove(); } } } if (statusEl) statusEl.textContent = (platform === 'copy') ? 'Ready.' : ''; } catch(err){ if (previewWin && !previewWin.closed) { previewWin.close(); } if (statusEl) statusEl.textContent = (err && err.message) ? err.message : 'Could not share.'; } }, true); })();