Review: The Running Man (1987)

The Running Man (1987)

Rated R

Score: 3 out of 5

Yet another notch in the filmography of a Hollywood legend at the peak of his powers, The Running Man, for you whippersnappers out there, can best be described as The Hunger Games if they made it back in the '80s, replaced Jennifer Lawrence with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and just fully let the decade's excess flow through it. (And before anyone says "ripoff", the basic concept arguably goes back to Robert Sheckley's 1958 short story "The Prize of Peril", if not earlier, to the point where the makers of a 1983 French film adaptation of Sheckley's story actually sued the makers of this movie for plagiarism.) It is a flamboyant, violent, and extra action movie that's flawed in many respects, but carries with it enough attitude and swagger to make up for deficiencies in the action scenes, ensuring that its take on the basic "killer game show" plot would define the genre until... well, The Hunger Games, really. Many pieces of this movie have been done better before and since, but as a unit, it's still solid action elevated by its most over-the-top moments and Arnie's charisma.

Set in the far-off year of 2019, where the world economy is in ruins, the elite run the country as a police state, and low-brow media is used to pacify the masses (huh), this film, very loosely adapted from a Stephen King-as-Richard Bachman novel, follows Ben Richards, a police helicopter pilot who was framed for a massacre of hungry, rioting civilians in Bakersfield that he had actually tried to prevent. He breaks out of the labor camp where he's spent eighteen months working, and sets out to find his brother, only to find a commercial jingle writer named Amber Mendez living in his apartment saying that he had been taken away for "re-education". Amber, understandably panicked at the extremely muscular wanted criminal who just broke into her apartment, turns him in when he tries to book it with her as his hostage, and he gets drafted to star on The Running Man, the most popular game show in America. The rules: contestants, all of them convicted criminals, are dumped into a stretch of Los Angeles that's been emptied out and turned into a battleground, where they are hunted to the death by various colorful and flamboyant "Stalkers" in a twisted version of American Gladiators. As Ben and two of the guys who helped him break out of prison fight to survive in the arena, Amber watches the game on TV and sees that Ben has been framed for additional crimes that she knows he didn't commit -- leading her to start wondering if he's an innocent man as she digs deeper into his case.

The action is more or less passable and workmanlike here, with some spots of R-rated '80s gore and some creative kills but not a whole lot that will truly stand out. Schwarzenegger himself said that director Paul Michael Glaser's work was subpar, comparing it to a television show, and while action movies since 1987 have proven that you can get much, much worse than this, overall this isn't really a movie that people remember for the action scenes. No, what people remember is the characters and style. Schwarzenegger, especially back in the '80s, needs no introduction in any movie he's in; he just needs to step onto the screen, and you know immediately that either he's the hero, or he's somebody who's not to be messed with. For Christ's sake, the man wears a World Gym shirt when we're introduced to him at the labor camp, as if just looking at him didn't tell us that he was jacked. He may have coasted on charisma and presence alone here, but they were more than enough. Richard Dawson, meanwhile, turns in a great self-parody as Damon Killian, the host and producer of The Running Man who, even when he's on stage introducing the contestants, can barely conceal what a gigantic asshole he is. Casting a real-life game show host in the part was one of this film's many flashes of brilliance, selling the premise as an exaggerated parody of everything wrong with American television. Dawson was clearly having a blast, taking all the skills he learned and honed on the sets of Family Feud, Match Game, and I've Got a Secret and putting them to great use as he works the crowd and engages in lecherous behavior with the ladies. He was one of the best and most memorable villains Schwarzenegger ever faced in his movies.

Likewise with the Stalkers who chase down Ben in the arena, big, beefy men equipped with all manner of creative weapons short of actual firearms. All are immediately recognizable, starting with the Japanese hockey-playing samurai Sub-Zero and continuing through the chainsaw-wielding Buzzsaw, the electric opera singer Dynamo, the flamethrower-and-jetpack-wielding Fireball, and the psychotic uber-patriot Captain Freedom, each of them styled like boss characters in a video game with their actors, including Jim Brown as Fireball and Jesse Ventura as Captain Freedom, making for towering, scenery-devouring presences. Each has a distinct personality and charisma to spare, with Captain Freedom getting the most focus despite getting the least opportunity to take on Richards in the arena, portrayed as a gung-ho warrior who takes the show way too seriously to the point of clashing with Killian. Even the flat direction and fairly thin writing for all of them couldn't do much to cover up the sheer force of personality of these guys, which went a long way to making this film's retro-dystopia setting so iconic. It was clear watching that, even if this film wasn't on Suzanne Collins' mind as she wrote The Hunger Games, it was a completely different story with the makers of its film adaptation, because this is a movie that thrives on the strength of its over-the-top villains and its set design.

The most frustrating part of the movie for me was the character of Amber, played by Maria Conchita Alonso. A songwriter for the network who slowly learns what's really going on, Amber gets plenty to do as she unravels the truth behind Richards' alleged crimes, and Alonso does a good job playing her as a capable heroine. She is, however, subjected to a lot of garbage over the course of the film by both Richards and the villains, way beyond her merely getting caught and sent into the arena as punishment halfway through. Richards did not come out of his introduction to Amber looking good, threatening her, somebody who did nothing wrong except recognize him as a guy who's wanted by the police, with physical violence and possibly even death if she didn't go along with his plans. Her initial reaction to him came across as completely justified in context. Her interactions with Dynamo, meanwhile, involve blunt rape threats, and yeah, Dynamo is a Stalker and a villain, but it's still a hackneyed trope; there were ways to show him as an asshole, even a misogynistic one, beyond him dropping his pants and forcing himself on her in a public place in a scene that just felt needlessly gross in a not-so-fun way. Maybe portray him behind the scenes as a domestic abuser or a guy going through a bitter divorce, one who is way too excited at the thought of a woman getting sent to die in the Running Man arena. Between those scenes and comments made by other characters, you get the sense that it's the film instead that's obsessed with that thought.

The Bottom Line

The Running Man may lack the depth of other dystopian sci-fi satires from both then and now, but it makes up for it with flash and style to spare. There's a reason why its premise and look are still so iconic thirty years later, and why any discussion of the depths of reality TV hell usually goes back to it as the logical conclusion of such.