- 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
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 Mini-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.
Running Man 2025 is no different than the Total Recall and Robocop remakes, soulless. Which is disappointing because I love Edgar Wright’s earlier work. He was simply a hired gun on this. It only had brief moments of his style.
Yes, it’s closer to the book than Arnold’s Running… pic.twitter.com/CR0XvfLzk7— Nerdrotic (@Nerdrotics) November 14, 2025
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.
I was so hyped for this until I saw the trailer, typical black-washing and notice, all the fascist troops are white…..
That’s like the original Star Wars trilogy is woke because the empire is all white dudes.
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?
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.
The movie has a macho hite male lead and didn’t have a single “girlboss” character, yet it’s a massive flop.
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.