After the author Richard Bachman was outed as a pseudonym for one of the single most popular English-language writers of the late 20th century, his creator felt the need to address the “why” of it all. In an intro for The Bachman Books, which collected four of the novellas penned under that name, Stephen King explained that he took on the literary alter ego partially as a blind taste test for readers, and partially as a way of publishing more work without saturating the market. There’s another reason, however, that can be read between the lines of what King describes as “the Bachman state of mind: low rage and simmering despair.” This was not just a pseudonym. It was also an outlet for some serious Bachman-King Overdrive.
The guy behind The Shining was never one to shy away from the darkness, but the secret identity allowed him to tap into something more psychologically unsettling than rabid St. Bernards and demonically possessed Plymouths. He was the Id, a dark half, the kind of writer who could give the horror-lit icon plausible deniability. Fear was now laced with loathing, handwringing concern, and 10ccs of uncut fuck-you anger. Bachman wasn’t King. And nowhere is that more apparent than his story The Running Man.
No, not the 1987 movie that twisted the dour, dystopian source material into quip-laden cheese-whiz for Arnold Schwarzenegger. We’re talking about Bachman’s tale of a nation ravaged by poverty and disease, controlled by a media in cahoots with the government, and content to amuse itself to death by watching reality-TV competition shows in which contestants win big cash prizes if they can avoid being murdered on live primetime broadcasts. The premise is high concept. The satire is broad. The book itself is a rougher read than you might imagine. It was written in 1982, but set in a future-shock version of 2025, which … yeah. A little too close for comfort.
This is the vibe that Edgar Wright is chasing with his version of The Running Man, which hews closely to the original text with a fidelity bordering on hero worship. Oh, it’s got action — plenty of action — and in-jokes, along with the sort of far-out formalism and warped sense of humor you’d expect from the auteur who gave the world Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The movie also has an ace in the hole with Glen Powell, one of the few contemporary alpha-charisma actors that feel built for stuff like this and believably might have been bred in a farm upstate that specializes in All-American movie stars with gajillion-watt grins. But for all of the multiplex-friendly fun Wright’s conjuring with this over-the-top spin on dystopian sci-fi blockbusters, the prevailing feeling here is dread. Most filmmakers would have diluted the grit and genuine sense of moral free fall. Wright doubles the dosage. Every adrenaline rush comes with a chaser of low rage and simmering despair.
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Rage is, in fact, the factory setting for the film’s hero. Powell may gift Ben Richards, the working-class everyguy with the long history of job-related insubordination, with his bodybuilding-boy-next-door handsomeness and believable athletic prowess. (Running man’s gotta run! A lot!) He’s also a genuine Good Samaritan, which tends to equal bad repercussions when you’re talking about a society that values Darwinian survival over empathy. But Richards is also the kind of person to go from zero to fist punch in an instant, and his temper temperature is permanently preheated to full boil. Those anger issues are what attract the heads of the network when our man makes the trudge down to the game-show recruiting office. Ben’s baby girl is sick, and black-market meds require money. A one-off stint on something like Speed the Wheel (answer trivia questions on a giant hamster wheel, which speeds up when you got one wrong) can nab him quick cash. Desperate times, etc.
Richards has been earmarked by no less than top TV producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin, cold-blooded) for the biggest showcase of them all: The Running Man, the network’s number-one program. The goal: Stay alive for 30 days, and he gets a billion dollars. The catch is that he’s being stalked by McCone (Lee Pace), a hunter with an impeccable catch-and-kill record, and his psychopathic goons. Average citizens are co-opted into reporting any sightings of contestants to a hotline. Snitches do not get stitches; they get cash prizes.
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Richards, along with two fellow runners (played by Katy O’Brian and Please Don’t Destroy’s Martin Herlihy), must avoid the surveillance state’s ever-watchful eyes, stay hidden, keep on the move. If they kill a hunter, they get a bonus. Daily recordings from each participant must be mailed in, and failure to create content results in immediate disqualification. The show’s mega-popular host, Bobby T. (Colman Domingo), weighs in every night on the “FreeVee,” keeping viewers abreast of stats and stoking fires of public animosity with the slippery truthiness of a Fox News broadcaster.
Colman Domingo (right) in ‘The Running Man’
Ross Ferguson/Paramount Pictures
When King/Bachman dreamed up this scenario in the early days of the Reagan era, it was just ridiculous enough to be both laughable and reprehensible, and cynically feasible enough to work as a Swiftian cautionary tale. A real Running Man reimagined for right now equals the sensation of having already fallen through the rabbit hole, and while Wright keeps everything moving at a sprinter’s pace, he’s not exactly burying the commentary or the comparisons. Were the show to be pitched now, streamer services would be fighting over it. Neither Brolin’s narcissistic power broker nor Domingo’s scenery-chewing master of ceremonies necessarily feel like caricatures. They seem soulless enough to be likely candidates for gigs in the current administration. The resistance shows up in the form of a former gang member who edits Elephant Graveyard-style exposés on the game show, and a pamphlet-printing revolutionary (Michael Cera) with a personal grudge against the cops. Both underground allies are in the book as well, but play extremely different in a climate in which asking corporate media not to cave in to pressure, or even calling out fascists, is viewed as radical subversion.
Sorry, does it seem like we’re suggesting that The Running Man has been transformed into a two-hour Noam Chomsky lecture? This is still a Hollywood spectacle, complete with explosions and celebrities and deep-cut needle drops, slick enough to keep Paramount happy without ruffling in-house censors’ feathers yet cool enough to not seem like an assembly-line product. Wright is genetically incapable of making a movie that doesn’t move, and you can sense his cine-nerd glee radiating from the screen every time a squib or a sight gag successfully detonates. Powell proves he can navigate chase scenes, stunt-heavy action sequences, and a clothing-optional escape that owes a debt to Harold Lloyd as good as anyone getting paid nine-figure salaries today. Even the most stone-faced supporting characters seem to be having a blast.
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But there’s a taste of ash tainting the popcorn thrills. And when The Running Man slows to a crawl in its final quarter, replicating the book’s last act involving a hostage (CODA‘s Emilia Jones), a final confrontation with McCone, and a hijacked plane, you begin to feel the simmering despair of the Bachman mindset bubbling up to the forefront. A midflight firefight comes off like an afterthought, punctuating repeated messages that, as with casinos, the house always wins when it comes to corporate manipulation. The mood and the pulse drops. Readers who remember the book’s conclusion will be either giddy or gag at this faithful interpretation’s commitment to the bit; King was being extremely ironic when he called it “the Richard Bachman version of a happy ending.”
Wright, however, adds a coda that, without spoiling anything, introduces something extra to the zero-sum game. In another day and age, the move might appear cheap — a cop-out that suggests cinematic universes and spin-offs and good old-fashioned comeuppance. Right now, the tweak surfs the feeling of of retaining faith in the arc of history when such notions seem hopeless. The Running Man knows shit is dark. That doesn’t mean running toward the light still isn’t aspirational. Or, to put it another way: Bachman would scoff at where the film drops viewers off. But Stephen King would approve.
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