What happened to the fun? Along with co-writer Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright burst onto the scene as the brains behind Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, all zip and fizz and crash zooms and witty edits, soundtracks that might have taken years to pull together, and fan-thrilling Easter eggs and cameos.
Unexpectedly, his sci-fi action film could have been made by any number of less gifted filmmakers. There’s little sign of that tightly calibrated, cinephile-fuelled pop-art house style that made his name in this update of Stephen King’s The Running Man (published under his pseudonym Richard Bachman to critique early Reagan-era saturation TV).
It’s a movie that got up on the wrong side of the bed and compensated with four quadruple espressos. Like Arnie’s spandex-and-sass 1987 version (not to mention The Hunger Games, The Squid Game, The Long Walk and any number of other variants on the theme,) it’s a parable of a near-future underclass giving blood to entertain the masses and hopefully win big in the process. But unlike Schwarzenegger’s version, Wright isn’t playing much of this for laughs. His lead, Hit Man’s Glen Powell’s Ben Richards, may be the most pissed-off protagonist since Mel Gibson’s thunderous heyday.
It’s a movie that got up on the wrong side of the bed and compensated with four quadruple espressos
Unable to provide for his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson) and their sick bubba, and fired from a series of (literally) toxic jobs, he signs up for a deadly reality TV show run by sleazy media exec (Josh Brolin, a highlight) and his charismatic host (Colman Domingo). Survive 30 days on The Running Man and he makes life-changing cash for his family; flame out early at the hands of a masked band of ‘Hunters’ and they’re still in the money. As The Spencer Davis Group once (almost) sang: keep on running, or die horribly.
The game, of course, is rigged: facial recognition tech, drone cams and a public incentivised to grass Richards up turn US cities into one big ambush. He does have the odd friend, though, like William H Macy’s arms dealer. And thanks to a revolutionary (Daniel Ezra) who creates viral videos about him, the longer he runs, the more of a folk hero he becomes.
You can read all this as an Antifa metaphor or a screed against capitalist plutocracy. But Wright and his Scott Pilgrim co-writer Michael Bacall’s script isn’t sharply focused in that direction and there’s little Paul Verhoeven-esque satire to leaven the tone. There is, happily, a goofy section that has Richards washing up at the remote pile of Michael Cera’s batshit insurrectionist and his deranged mum which plays like Home Alone at the Psycho mansion.
Other set pieces keep pulses high, with plenty of narrow squeaks and double crosses. But the slick and charming Powell is playing against his strengths here – and so is Wright, with dream sequences, inelegant flashbacks and a bang average set piece set on a jetliner all unexpectedly rote. It’s unlikely to be joining Bad Boys II and Point Break on Danny Butterman’s DVD shelf.
In cinemas worldwide Fri Nov 14.