Ben Richards signs up for a game show to help buy meds for his sick daughter. If he wins? He’ll get a billion dollars. If he loses? He’ll literally die. This R-rated remake of a Stephen King story is bloody, profane and excessive in every way. While it comes with some satirical jabs, it’s loaded with sucker punches, too.
Ben Richards did not want to be the next Running Man.
“Don’t worry,” he tells his 2-year-old daughter. “Dad’s not that crazy.”’
Yes, if he won the television competition, the payoff would be astronomical—a cool 1 billion in new dollars. Cash like that would do more than buy medicine for his sick little girl: It’d set his family up for life. They could move out of the slums. His wife, Sheila, could quit her ooky job as a high-class hostess. Money like that? It’d change everything.
But no one wins The Running Man. No one. The losers? Well, they die. And most die screaming as America cheers.
However, the government-operated Network offers other game shows too—shows that may hurt or maim but won’t necessarily kill. And since Ben can’t get a job (since he was blacklisted for essentially being a whistleblower), those shows feel like the only financial lifeline that Ben has.
“I get on one of these, [our daughter] gets the meds,” Ben tells Sheila. And reluctantly, Sheila acquiesces. But before Ben leaves for tryouts, she exacts a vow. “Promise me you won’t get on that show.” Ben promises and walks out the door.
But the Network’s execs have different ideas.
Ben’s strong. Fast. And most importantly, angry. “You’re unquestionably the angriest man to ever try out for any one of our shows,” a staff psychologist tells him. (“Well, that [ticks] me off,” he tells her.) And the Network just can’t let all that rage go to waste, right?
Network chief Dan Killian brings Ben into his office. He smiles across the desk. “You have what it takes to go the distance,” he tells Ben, to survive all 30 days that’ll earn him his billion. And even if Ben doesn’t survive, he can take solace in the fact that his family will still be well taken care of. Every day Ben survives comes with cash. Every goon Ben kills earns him a bonus. Kill one of the game’s ultra-elite Hunters? A cool $100,000 lands in Sheila’s bank account.
So Ben signs. Despite all his promises, the promise of an easier life for his wife and daughter overcomes all doubts.
Killian smiles even wider. He knows Ben is ratings gold. Push the right buttons, and Ben will make the perfect made-for-TV villain whom people will love to watch die. Killian can see the narrative now: Ben’s a scumbag, a thug, a drain on society. Get Ben to scream into the camera? Viewers will scream for his blood.
Ben Richards does love his family, that much is painfully obvious. He’s willing to sell his life to buy them a brighter future.
Ben would love to get a real job, too. Alas, he’s been blacklisted for insubordination. And how did he get that black mark on his record? By reporting dangerously high radiation levels that endangered the men under his charge. (He was swiftly given the boot, because doing the right thing is not rewarded in this dystopian version of the United States.) He helps several people, both before and during Running Man tryouts, and we’re treated to some quick flashbacks where he did the same during his job.
Once the games begin, Ben’s altruism is (largely by necessity) curtailed. But he does convince a woman that he’s not really the bad guy in The Running Man. And Ben soon becomes a source of inspiration for a good chunk of the country’s forgotten and downtrodden—perhaps setting in motion an opportunity for real, positive change. (Though as we’ll see, that “opportunity” comes with some issues, too.)
Ben disguises himself as a blind priest. When someone asks Ben if he’ll go to hell for using a condom with his girlfriend, Ben says that the guy might go to hell if he doesn’t use one. (Ben jokes that a Catholic relative had too many children and felt like he was there every day of his life.)
A street preacher stands near a sign that says, “Christ the Redeemer damns you to hell.” A contestant goes to a place called the Holy Grail Casino, a den of iniquity festooned by massive crosses on the outside. Someone turns a wall-mounted cross upside down to reveal a secret panel. We hear someone wish another, “Godspeed.”
In a video documenting an earlier Running Man competition, one of the competitors lies in the midst of several naked women: Their privates are pixelized. Another contestant—apparently a lesbian—hangs out in a glitzy night club filled with women, many of whom wear very little. One such scantily clad woman performs on a pole.
Ben spends quite a bit of one sequence wearing just a towel. When Running Man killers circle the building he’s in, Ben is forced to leave via a window—taking the towel off at one juncture. We see his exposed rear end.
Sheila works as a high-end waitress/hostess serving rich clientele. While the movie doesn’t give us her exact job description, we know through conversation that she’s expected to play nice with the sometimes-grabby customers. Killian suggests to Ben that Sheila is a prostitute. When Killian sees that it’s a tender issue for Ben, he plays up that angle in Ben’s introduction as a contestant: The audience sees Sheila in a variety of coquettish poses as the show’s host, Bobby Thompson, suggests she’s a lady of loose morals.
Ben is one of three Running Man contestants. The other two visit Killian’s office and leave it with a glass of champagne in one hand and a beautiful escort on the other. Both contestants—one male and one female—flirt with those female escorts as they head to the elevator. When Ben is offered the same treatment, he has a clipped, two-word response: “I’m married.”
Some girlie mags show up on screen (though I don’t think we see anything critical). We see Ben in underwear. A contestant flirts with a store clerk.
The Running Man—both the fictional show and the real-world movie—is predicated on violence. Contestants are the prey of the show’s hired hunters. But if regular ol’ viewers spy a contestant and dispatch him or her, they’ll earn a small bounty for themselves. (A couple of young vigilantes receive a lifetime supply of breakfast cereal, for instance.) Of course, if those vigilantes get in the way of the people paid to kill contestants, they might find themselves in a body bag, too.
Dozens of people die here, though perhaps the grossest deaths take place in past Running Man seasons (which we see on video). One man gets caught in a bear trap and then has his head squashed between two swinging logs. Another woman is shot in the head with an arrow, pinning her corpse against a tree.
Most of the deaths are more pedestrian (for an R-rated actioner). Several people are shot in the head, blood spattering and pouring. Others are peppered with bullets. Still, others die in explosions—at least one of which is triggered by the victim’s own hand. A character is immolated by a pair of flame throwers, and others die by fire as well. People are stabbed. A plane is shot down via a missile, presumably killing whoever might’ve survived on board. Innocent people, including at least one child, are attacked and apparently gunned down. Two vehicles slam into each other—one filled with explosives, the other manned by a doomed driver.
A car/motorcycle chase culminates with two motorcyclists getting run over. A man confesses after suffering bloody torture. Someone’s stabbed in the stomach but survives. People hit and kick each other. Ben slams his fist into protective glass, telling the man behind it that if he mentions Ben’s daughter again, no glass will protect him from being choked out. Ben grabs shock sticks by the working end a couple of times—clearly a painful, but not permanently damaging, experience. Explosions rock several scenes. In another game show, a man runs on a sort of hamster wheel. When he can’t keep up, he falls off and down several feet—lying apparently lifeless on a glass floor. We see an advertisement for a beverage called Liquid Death. “Murder that thirst,” its tagline reads.
We hear more than 40 f-words and about the same number of s-words. Also on tap: “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “d–n,” “h—,” “p-ss,” “p-ssy,” “d–k” and about five uses of “g-dd–n.” Jesus’ name is abused once.
We see scads of middle fingers flipped.
A Running Man contestant spends her last night in a raucous club, where we see a great many people drink. Later, she brags to the camera, “Don’t drink and drive—unless you’re good at it.”
Sheila gives her daughter something to help her feel better. Ben laments that they can only afford drugs that relieve her symptoms, not ones that address the disease itself. We meet another family in much the same boat: A mom injects her cancer-riddled daughter with painkillers because the family can’t afford real treatment. In a brief scene, we see people standing in a line, a green neon “Drugs” sign hanging on the brick wall beside them.
Characters drink champagne and beer. Killian smokes a cigar.
A sick man seems to vomit a bit while standing in line; he collapses on the floor shortly thereafter.
The movie’s dystopian United States looks like an awful place, filled with government surveillance and a great deal of social inequality. The Running Man game show becomes a springboard for the society’s have-nots to rebel, igniting a violent class struggle.
Killian, head of the United States’ nearly all-powerful Network, openly mocks his predecessors and their efforts to inject entertainment with some sort of morality. People just want to be entertained, he tells Ben, just like the Romans of old. And as he brings his newest star to the Running Man stage, he says, “Welcome to the modern Colosseum.”
The Running Man—the film, not the fictional show—takes satirical aim at a great many things, and some of those critiques feel right on. One of the most popular shows in this futuristic world looks like a vapid ripoff of The Kardashians or a Real Housewives series. Videos can be manipulated at will in this world, pushing into our society’s own real-world uncertainties over artificial intelligence, deepfakes and what can truly be trusted.
Killian’s Running Man show is a master class of rage manipulation, twisting the lives of its contestants to fit into neat narratives. The contestants are flat-out evil, full stop. Therefore, it’s up to the viewers to catch these dastardly villains and help bring them to justice. As such, The Running Man show plays on hate, fear and voyeuristic desires—the basest elements of our natures. It embraces the Colosseum and tells the audience that their lust for blood is a good thing—or, as the show’s host says, their American right.
The Running Man plays as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, seemingly warning us of a future that could be. But it offers us its own Colosseum of entertainment. And it, too, seeks to stoke some rage.
The movie condemns the bloody voyeurism. But, of course, it follows those floating fictional cameras wherever they go. It deplores how Killian et al demonize the less fortunate—then degrades into a brutal revenge fantasy wherein the story’s villains receive no due process, much less mercy. Both versions of The Running Man love to chastise horrific excess: all while showing us every last crumb of it.
Based on a 1982 book by Stephen King and the 1989 film adaptation starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, this Running Man feels a little retro itself. This sci-fi story comes with a satirical axe to grind—not unlike, say, Starship Troopers or RoboCop. It’s loaded with action and scads of R-rated content.
But The Running Man feels a bit hollow, too: It, like Killian, seeks to entertain. And it doesn’t mind spattering a bunch of blood to do it.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
