A former soldier is given the job of making a life-saving medical delivery, but he’s then attacked by cartel thugs who want to steal the donor organ. Good-versus-evil heroics abound here, but the PG-13 level language and thumping, stabbing, shooting and bone-breaking bloodiness make things more difficult.
By every measurable metric, Hank Malone appears to be an earnest and honorable guy. You won’t hear him dropping one-liners in a crowd; he’s more of a serious sort. If Hank makes a commitment, you can definitely count on him to quietly follow through.
That wasn’t always the case.
When this former soldier returned home from battles in Afghanistan, he came back with a massive drinking problem. That addiction ate up every good thing in his life and spat out nothing but misery. And ever since, Hank’s been struggling to stay off the booze and become the good man that he should have been. It hasn’t been easy.
In fact, when Hank calls his ex-wife, Monica, to report that he finally earned his one-year sobriety medallion from Alcoholics Anonymous, he does so almost apologetic that it’s taken that long. She congratulates him and sincerely encourages him. Then Monica hangs up and moves on with her remarried life.
But her statements mean the world to Hank. It’s one more small step toward shaping a better life for himself. And he’s sure he’ll get there someday. He just needs to keep moving, keep striving.
In the meantime, he’s been working odd jobs that require his … particular set of skills. Hank is a big man—a stand-out-in-a-crowd kind of big. He doesn’t want things to get messy, no matter the job, but he’s not afraid of using his heavily muscled bulk to get a job done, either.
Today’s job, however, seems pretty straightforward: Hank just has to drive a courier with an important medical delivery from the airport to a hospital. And if he can beat the ticking clock—a window of viability for an organ transplant—he can be part of saving a very sick young girl’s life.
Problem is, Hank isn’t just working against a clock: He must also face off with a ruthless cartel that wants to grab that live-saving cargo. Organs with a rare blood type, like this one, carry a huge price tag on the black market. So, Hank’s simple courier job soon spirals into a harrowing mission packed with merciless killers at every turn.
However, by every measurable metric, Hank is ready to see this mission through. That young girl at the other end will be saved, no matter what it takes.
Hank establishes early on that he’s a fighter who’s battling his way back to being an upright, good man. And he puts his own life on the line repeatedly to get the transplant organ to the sick little girl. (We later learn that Hank’s own small daughter died of leukemia, and he was too drunk to even attend her funeral.)
In light of all that, it becomes clear that Monica truly loved/loves Hank but couldn’t stay with the addicted person he had become. After Hank reports on his sobriety, Monica tells him, “She would have been so proud of you.” In turn, Hank gives Monica a valuable item to use for her new baby son’s college fund.
[Spoiler Warning] We also learn that Hank’s young daughter was in love with France and the French culture. And so Hank learns the language and makes other Francophile choices to honor his daughter’s memory and demonstrate personal changes that his daughter never got to see. “I love you with all my heart,” Hank declares while remembering the girl.
Hank growls out “Godspeed” after shooting someone.
When we first meet Ben, the medical courier, he’s flirting and joking with a flight attendant, trying to convince her to meet up with him later that night. We get the very distinct opinion that this is his regular routine—and those winking habits have led to him being a man with two or three ex-wives.
In one of Hank’s jobs, he’s hired to find a politician who has secluded himself in a hotel room with a prostitute. When Hank gets there, a drunken woman in a form-fitting dress staggers out of the room. The politician is inside, dressed in boxers with no shirt.
Runner is an unambiguous actioner, a straightforward smashing and bashing battle between good guy protagonist Hank and a cartel full of evil thugs led by antagonist Damián Zaldívar. Since this pic is also a race against a ticking clock, much of it is focused on battles that take place in and between moving vehicles.
Cars (including police vehicles and an ambulance) are riddled with automatic gun fire. Vehicles crash into bridge trestles and larger trucks filled with metal pipes and other heavy equipment. Vehicles flip and burn, they crash through walls and into a building’s interior. One car is hit so hard that the front end of the vehicle is torn off, engine and all. Gas cans explode. Oxygen tanks ignite and flip a speeding car backward.
Men are thumped aside by speeding vehicles. Several different people (men and women) are battered and threatened with rifles, pistols and sharp objects. Damián even threatens to kill a schoolyard full of children if Hank doesn’t hand over what he wants.
For Hank’s part, he starts off as a guy who wants to avoid bloodshed and simply make his delivery to help a dying young girl. But as his opposition intensifies, he gets fiercer as well—from pounding men to the ground, snapping bones and driving faces into the spinning wheels of overturned cars to gunfights that feature shotgun blasts to a foe’s face and chest.
[Spoiler Warning] We eventually learn that Damian isn’t trying to steal the rare organ for its monetary value, but to transplant into his own mother. However, that woman is a foul, cantankerous mob boss who is willing to have her thugs kill and destroy anything or anyone (including the girl the organ is intended for and the girl’s mother) in order to fulfill her own needs.
Things get bloody, but they are tamped down to PG-13 levels. Still, the last five to 10 minutes of the film boil down to a brutal and blood-covered battle between two men, with both men getting pummeled and flailed mercilessly. One fighter is impaled and hoisted up on a wall.
In the heat of a car crash, Hank whispers an f-word under his breath. In addition, the dialogue is spattered with two s-words and a couple uses each of the words “a–” and “h—.”
Ben talks to someone about a wine that was so good it almost made him “go blind.” We see some cartel thugs drinking beer. A nurse gives a badly wounded man several shots. A different nurse threatens to kill a young girl with a syringe full of a lethal substance.
A bickering married couple tells Hank to keep (or kill) a valuable pet that neither of them want anymore. (He keeps it.)
As any police officer or dedicated soldier will tell you, sometimes doing good can result in a messy conflict filled with evil actions. And that good-versus-evil rip and tear is the linear, beating heart of Runner. Alan Ritchson is the muscular, straight-shooting man who wants to do right, and Owen Wilson plays the lightly annoying sidekick who’s supposed to add a bit of humor to the mix.
There are definitely cheer-worthy elements here and even a few wipe-a-tear-from-your-eye instances. Of course, as you might imagine, this pic is also fairly formulaic. And that means that viewers will encounter an ongoing parade of thumping, stabbing, shooting and bone-breaking bloodiness. There’re also some winks at a few sensual situations and some coarse language to navigate.
I mean, this is an Alan Ritchson pic, so think Reacher—only with a bit less profanity. All of which suggests that if you’re set on seeing this flick, leaving younger kids at home might be a good idea.
However, if you’re an adult who likes your heroism with some hard-hitting grit behind it, this pic might be your cup of creatine-laced tea.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
