REVIEW: The Running Man

A lot of people have wanted to discuss Edgar Wright's new The Running Man outing as "the remake" of the 1987 film (with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a very different Ben Richards). As for me, I find it more natural to think of it as "another adaptation of ..."

Even so, my mind was also on action blockbusters of the 1980s watching this movie today. But my thoughts didn't linger so much on the Paul Michael Glaser film specifically so much as the general action scene of the day. The era of Bruce Willis and Kurt Russell and the he-men they brought to life. These machine-gun wielding, foul-mouthed anarchists who wanted to tear down the establishment fed a real need for men with a lot of directionless anger.

This was, as it would turn out, the same era in which Stephen King first published The Running Man, telling the story of a down-on-his luck man who tries to rescue his wife and daughter from poverty by winning a televised, nationwide manhunt. (I only read the book once, but based on that recollection, this adaptation seemed to me like perfectly recognizable next to the source material.)

My concern with this type of story has always been a sort of willful glamorizing of a reckless expression of masculinity, fed by delusions that men of this day have somehow reached a boiling point that earlier generations couldn't possibly imagine, so who is anyone to say that these displays of violence aren't justified by the times? And seeing certain developments within American culture in the last year especially, I don't think my fears are unfounded.

I will say, though, that this movie puts a little more effort into linking that brazen anarchy with something a little more human. Ben Richards is not only looking out for his daughter, he's also the kind of guy who will yell for help when an old man in line with him starts vomiting uncontrollably. RE: this is a guy who is genuinely attuned to the needs of the underclass and the disadvantaged.

But it's not so much that Ben Richards fuses these attributes into something greater so much as he just kind of holds both contradictory attributes in him. The movie insists that Richards in all his penchant for brutality is only excelling at this violence because he has to. And, yes, the movie has some internal examination about these things. Not enough, though, to disguise why we're actually here. We still progress through almost every major junction by either shooting something or blowing something up. I'm not sure if this film or the world at large has actually figured out how these things coexist in a person, or even whether they ought to.

Glen Powell is serviceable as a dad, but his few scenes opposite his wife or kid were not necessarily standouts. And in this way, he's not remarkably different from his 1980s ancestors. Powell's mostly just here to give to millennials and gen z what their parents and grandparents had with Sylvester Stallone. And full credit to him, he never feels like he is overcompensating in this.

Colman Domingo gives perhaps the most satisfying performance in the film, like a murderous firework. Josh Brolin is overflowing with a different kind of charisma, but he reigns it in just enough to avoid spilling over into cartoonery.

Emilia Jones of CODA gets snared by the events of the film late in the game, and she brings a believable sort of clueless complicity that gets to metamorphize into something of substance. The parts of the film that worked best for me happened to occur while her character was participating in the plot, and I'm free to imagine that she was in some way directly responsible for this. When I said this movie solves almost all of its problems through violence, I'll concede that her character's introduction gives Ben the chance to do something better (congrats for not killing civilians, I guess?)

I feel like the easy line for a film like this is some variation of how this movie's dystopia just feels like current events ... which it kinda does. (The movie's exposé on totalitarianism and the media feels more prescient in some parts than others, but the fact that it also builds a solid case against generative AI might just fill in the gap.) But again, forecasting was only a part of the goal. Really, this is a retreat into the plastic anger of the 1980s and the hopes that the spirit of John McLane and Rambo will somehow overpower the corrupt institutions in place--and we can all sort out the consequences of what exactly that means later.

--The Professor

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PROFESSOR'S PICKS: Five Lessons Hollywood Ought to Learn from the Success of WICKED

That which has teased studios since the freak success of La La Land and The Greatest Showman has finally come to pass: Hollywood has finally launched a successful musical. Or rather, they've launched two. The musical is sort of like the golden idol at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark . It's valuable beyond imagination--but only if you know just how to retrieve it. There have been specific periods where the musical has yielded tremendous rewards for Hollywood, but for the greater part of the lifespan of feature-filmmaking, studios have been punished for reaching beyond their means. Yet after ages of dormancy, t he years leading up to the Wicked movies were lined with musicals, more than we'd seen in the previous decade. A few of them were quite well crafted. Others were ... learning experiences. None really became what we'd call "mainstream." But Wicked and Wicked: For Good have both seen rare success. I'm publishing ...

REVIEW: ELIO

Here's a fact: the term "flying saucer" predates the term "UFO." The United States Air Force found the former description too limiting to describe the variety of potential aerial phenomena that might arise when discussing the possibility of life beyond earth. There may have to be a similar expansion of vocabulary within the alien lexicon with Pixar's latest film, Elio , turning the idea of an alien abduction into every kid's dream come true. The titular Elio is a displaced kid who recently moved in with his aunt after his parents died. She doesn't seem to understand him any better than his peers do. He can't imagine a place on planet earth where he feels he fits in. What's a kid to do except send a distress cry out into the great, big void of outer space? But m iracle of miracles: his cries into the universe are heard, and a band of benevolent aliens adopt him into their "communiverse" as the honorary ambassador o...

Saying Goodbye to Stranger Things

There's a quote from critic Mark Caro that I think about a lot. I shared it back when I did my critical survey of Pixar movies . Writing about Finding Nemo , Caro wrote in the Chicago Tribune in 2003 , "Classic film eras tend to get recognized in retrospect while we take for granted timeless works passing before our eyes. So let's pause to appreciate what's been going on at Pixar Animation Studios." I think that captures the aspirations of all active-minded media consumers. Or at least, it ought to. "This good thing won't last forever, so savor it before the sun goes down." Modern Times (1936) But this is also a very hard mindset to access in an online culture that is always seeking to stamp labels and scores on a thing before we shove it on the conveyor belt and move on to the next parcel. It's something I have been thinking about for the last year or so as the completion of the Stranger ...

REVIEW: Mickey 17

Coming into Mickey 17 having not read the source material by Edward Ashton, I can easily see why this movie spoke to the sensibilities of Bong Joon Ho, particularly in the wake of his historic Academy Award win five years ago. Published in 2022, it feels like Ashton could have been doing his Oscars homework when he conceived of the story--a sort of mashup of Parasite , Aliens , and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times . Desperate to escape planet earth, Mickey applies for a special assignment as an "expendable," a person whose sole requirement is to perform tasks too dangerous for normal consideration--the kind that absolutely arise in an outer space voyage to colonize other planets. It is expected that Mickey expire during his line of duty, but never fear. The computer has all his data and can simply reproduce him in the lab the next day for his next assignment. Rinse and repeat. It's a system that we are assured cannot fail ... until of course it does. I'll admit my ...

REVIEW: ZOOTOPIA 2

Any follow-up to the 2016 masterpiece, Zootopia , is going to be disadvantaged. Cinema was still a year ahead of Jordan Peele's "Get Out" when Disney released one of the most articulate explanations of race, allyship, and accountability ever put to film. Now that everyone knows how good, even "timely," a Disney pic can be, how do you surprise everyone a second time? The insights in this sequel won't spur any new chapters in your sociology 101 textbook. Though honestly, neither was the deflection of white saviourship that novel back in 2016. We more or less knew how racial profiling and biases played out in the landscape. What surprised many of us (and validated the rest of us) was the idea that these ideas could be articulated so eloquently in a children's film. It seems that the studio tried the same thing here with Zootopia 2 that it did with Frozen II six years ago. I think a lot of people wanted that m...

REVIEW: MERCY

Everyone who was despairing that Star-Lord and Taser-Face never got their showdown, your moment in the sun has come. In MERCY , out this weekend, future Los Angeles has adopted a justice system in which criminals are weighed before an AI judge. Those on trial are allowed the full disposal of public surveillance and digital footprints in order to clear their name within a 90-minute timeframe. And this is the situation in which recovering alcoholic and policeman, Chris Raven, (Chris Pratt) find himself as he is charged with the murder of his wife, and he is left to make his case before the commanding Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) or face execution. The movie's buoyed up by a respectable ensemble cast, including Kali Reis, Annabelle Wallis, Kylie Rogers, Jeff Piere, and Chris Sullivan. Pratt and Ferguson are both up to the task, but we've also seen more memorable work from both of them. The movie knows ...

Edward G. Robinson: Patron Saint of Forgotten Men

I want to start off this essay by talking about one of my go-to movie stars, Chris Pratt. My first exposure to him was at the end of my freshmen summer term when he landed as Peter Quill/Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy , a film I very much enjoyed, as you all know. (I would also see The Lego Movie for the first time around here). And by the time he was up for Jurassic World the next summer, I was up to date with my Parks and Recreation viewing, and the world had accepted him as a household name. Like a lot of celebrities who came into prominence in the wake of social media, part of Pratt’s strengths lies in his supreme accessibility. But where someone like Ryan Reynolds found his market as being this cynical son-of-a-gun, Pratt’s appeal was his complete lack of pretense. His sincerity. Whe...

REVIEW: West Side Story

Slight spoiler, the first shot of Steven Spielberg's West Side Story adaptation opens on a pile of rubble, a crumbled building wrecked to make way for new development. I amusedly wondered if this was maybe an accidental metaphor, a comment on this new adaptation of the stage show supplanting the legendary film version in 1961. There's not a lot about the 2021 film adaptation that deviates largely from the blueprint of the 1961 film or the stage musical on which it is based. That blueprint, of course, being the romance between two teenagers on opposite ends of a gang rivalry in 1950s New York. A few songs get swapped around, the casting is more appropriate, but there's no gimmick. We have to assume, then, that at the end of the day, Spielberg just wanted to try his hand at remaking a childhood favorite. Filmmakers, take note. Follow Spielberg's example. When revisiting an old text, you don't need a gimmick. Good taste is enough. ...

Fine, I Will Review The Percy Jackson Show (again)

I have wondered if I was the only one who thought that "Sea of Monsters" was the weakest of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians pentalogy, but I have seen my reading echoed by other book loyalists. This second installment is perhaps penalized partially because it marks several major junctions in the larger series. This is, for example, the part of the series where the scope of the adventure really starts to enlarge. We know going in that there's an angry, deceased titan out to destroy Olympus, and that he's amassing an army, and so we need a sense that this threat is growing stronger. But this also marks a turning point in how series author, Rick Riordan, chooses to develop his main character. And so, season 2 of the Disney+ television adaptation faces similar crossroads. Season 3 of this show is already filming as we speak, so its immediate future is already spoken for, as far as production goes. But stylistically, this second seas...

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