The Running Man (2025) Review
This weekend the latest Stephen King adaptation, The Running Man drops in theaters. This is also the latest film from Edgar Wright and Glen Powell. This was one of my most anticipated movies of fall 2025. Did the movie live up to the hype? Let’s talk about it!
The Good
From beginning to end I thought this movie was an absolute blast and so far is one of the most entertaining movies I’ve seen in 2025. It’s a film that has an intriguing premise that allows for a lot of fun moments and big action set pieces. If you don’t know what this movie is about, it's about Glen Powell’s character, Ben Richards who competes in this reality television competition where he’s hunted for 30 days by multiple assassins and if he survives those 30 days he wins $1 billion. That premise mixed with a great director in Edgar Wright with a fun cast you get one of the most energetic and fun movies of the year. It sort of just delivers everything that you expect from a blockbuster where you get big action, humor, and emotion. We get blockbusters released all of the time but the way this movie is done, it feels like a more simplistic traditional blockbuster that we don’t get a lot of in the year 2025.
One of the reasons why the film is so much fun is because you have a very lively and energetic cast. Everybody in here is having a lot of fun and nailing their roles. In the lead is Glen Powell who continues to establish himself as one of Hollywood’s next leading men. He has to play multiple different people in this movie where he’s the family man at the beginning, he’s the action hero, and he’s in disguises throughout the film pretending to be other people. He’s able to do all of it and it’s a performance where if he doesn’t work, the movie doesn’t work. It’s not just Powell that’s great, he’s surrounded by a very fun cast played by great actors. One of the stand outs for me was Colman Domingo as the game show host. He’s clearly having a lot of fun in this role and just chewing up every scene that he’s in. Once again, he’s having to play different people. One is the charming charismatic game show host that the public sees and loves, but also the guy that’s trying to be entertaining so he’s doing shady stuff to get the crowd excited. He’s one of my favorite actors working today, everybody’s performance is fantastic and I wanna see him in more roles like this. You also have Josh Brolin as the producer of the show. He’s playing this very shady guy that’s good at sweet talking everybody around him to get what he wants. He’s playing a character that you hate and you want to see taken out. He’s having a great year between Weapons, The Running Man, and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, which I’m hoping is really good because I love the first two. But like I said everybody in here is really good. There’s not that obvious weak link, the one that stuck out like a sore thumb.
It’s also a film that has a lot of very cool and exciting action from beginning to end. What I like about the action is that it’s all so different, all are set in different locations, so there’s a lot of variety in the mix. No two action sequences feel the same which is cool and provides for a very engaging viewing experience. There’s multiple things that I like about the action in this movie. First up, the trailers didn’t give a lot of it away. They showed and teased the action, but didn’t give you much context for the action or how it plays out. Despite recognizing a number of the set pieces from the trailers I was still surprised with how it worked. Second, Edgar Wright knows how to shoot fun action sequences. The way they’re edited together mixed with him using wide camera angles so you can see everything makes for these action set pieces that are thrilling and exciting. There’s two action sequences that stood out to me the most. First up, the one that’s shown in the trailer of the grenade in the elevator with Lee Pace’s character. That entire sequence is really good, it’s creative and fun with what’s taking place and what Glen Powell has to do in order to escape. The action set pieces with Michael Cera’s character are very cool and creative. It’s a different type of action sequence but it acts as a Home Alone inspired sequence except it’s rated-R and with Powell and Cera at the center of it.
The other thing about this movie that I really liked was the world building for the movie. I found this movie to be an interesting watch because so many of the themes in this movie and what the world has turned into feels so relevant to today. I don’t know if Stephen King is a time traveler and predicts the future but both this film and The Long Walk take these ideas that feel futuristic and fictional but are dealing with subject matter so relevant to today. With The Running Man, you have this guy that’s in almost this post apocalyptic society with the government using the poor to compete in deadly competition for entertainment. There’s something so sick and twisted about that. Even how they use the media in this world and spreading false information felt so relevant today and really fits into the today with how the government and politics are currently operating. Since the world is so layered and complex it means that it’s a world that you want to go back and visit. There’s all sorts of different games that are introduced that aren’t The Running Man and you feel like you can tell a story about all of them and it’ll be interesting. I don’t think movie necessarily needs a sequel because it wraps everything up nicely, but I do think there’s room for spinoffs and more adventures in this world. It’s always a positive whenever you leave a movie that introduces you to this new world and you want to explore more of it.
Finally, the film is able to have a really nice sense of humor. From beginning to end there’s just a lot of really solid laughs that got a laugh out of me and my audience. Some of the humor comes from the absurd nature of what’s going on and what Glen Powell is getting himself into. Since they have a very fun and charming cast, the cast is able to be a lot of fun and deliver humor in all of the right spots. Some of it can be dark humor and broad humor, no matter what it was it made me laugh.
The Bad
I feel like giving a movie like this where there’s a lot of deaths in the movie and other competitors in the competition with Richards, it means that it’s a hard movie to market. If you’ve seen the trailers you see some of these people in only a handful of locations and that means you know the fate of certain characters going into the movie. I don’t know if I blame that on the movie, some of it can be predictable with who dies and that’s built into the basic concept of the movie and the game. This wasn’t a big issue with the movie. In fact, none of my issues with the movie are particularly big. But as I was watching it, there was a predictable side to what was going on. It’s even weirder that some of the people they prominently show in the trailers are extended cameos in the film.
Also, the basic motivation for Ben Richards is trying to win money to help pay for his kid’s medication because he’s sick. That’s certainly a driving force throughout the movie, you never forget that it’s Ben’s motivation in the film. But it still felt a bit underdeveloped. The wife and daughter basically disappear once the game starts and they don’t really appear until the epilogue. I wish that in the middle of the movie they would cut back to them to see the wife’s reaction to the news and what’s going on. It felt a bit underdeveloped and like you could’ve found a way to add little moments here and there.
Final Thoughts: Overall, I really dug The Running Man. It was an absolute blast that’s thrilling and exciting from beginning to end. I haven’t read the book or seen the 1987 adaptation with Arnold Schwarzenegger but I dug this version. Glen Powell continues to establish himself as a leading man, he’s surrounded by a great cast with Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin, and many more. There’s a few issues here and there, but I dug this movie a good bit.
The Score: 8.7/10 (B+)
*All picture showed here are credited to Paramount*
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