K-SCORE: 18
Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Writer: Steven E. de Souza
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Richard Dawson
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“puns come in two categories: bad and horribly bad. Most are the latter.”
In the year 2017, America is ruled by a totalitarian regime that keeps people in line by firing machine guns at them when they go on strike because they have no food. Most who have resources are distracted by government-run game shows featuring real live death and dismemberment. Those that dare to resist are framed for crimes they didn’t commit and thrown into the games to be murdered by career sadists. Family Feud’s Richard Dawson is here to kiss old women on the cheek as they choose the means to these unfortunate victims ultimate demise. But this time, they underestimated former helicopter pilot and all-around badass good guy, Ben. I give you: The Running Man.
SCOTT'S 200
Running Man is the quintessence of 80’s action scifi dystopic filmmaking – which if you think is a niche genre, you would be wrong. I agree with Kyle that its vision of the future is “spectacular” – I couldn’t disagree more strongly that it is “wrong.” Watching Arnold ruthlessly murder a series of becostumed Super Villains (one of which is singing opera!) is the future I want to live in, the future we deserve! That we don’t have murder-based reality shows and garishly colored onesies in the present, is our failure, not Running Man’s. I award the film 17 out of 20 ZORPs. And Kyle’s review 2 out of 5.
The Running Man eluded me for years. I didn’t know this movie existed until a couple weeks ago. It’s like I got to go to the movies in the 80s today and what they were displaying was a story set thirty years in the future, from which I’d just come. It’s awesome. Everything is wrong, as is the case with most 80s dystopia. Mostly it’s far too negative, except our airport security is both stricter and less effective than what’s shown in this policed state. What shocks me about the dark, dirty, 80s-version of the bleak future is not only the speed with which they expected we would arrive at such a future but also the distinctly still-80sness of that future. Look at the outfits and hairstyles from this film. I think every decade labors under the misconception that their decade is it for fashion, believing that what they have will exist forever. Everyone’s been wrong throughout history, but the people of the 80s were quite a bit more spectacular in their degree of wrongness. I mean look at these sexy dancer onesies. It’s incredible.
“The villains are themed as if randomly generated from behind-the-scenes die rolls.”
I can’t claim to have enjoyed the plot of the film that much. It’s kind of like someone wrote a computer program to produce action scripts from the appropriate time period. The backstory was definitely just a coin toss between dead family and framed for a crime. The villains are themed as if randomly generated from behind-the-scenes die rolls. One of the die had races on it, another had body-types, another had weapons, and the final one had elements. Show me Japanese, machete-wielding, ice-obsessed, fat guy! The costume design for the guy who played Dynamo was dynamite! (By the way, wikipedia actually lists his character as: “an opera-singing stalker who drives a buggy and wears a suit that allows him to arc electricity.”) And Jim Brown plays Inferno. Don’t worry. I won’t spoil his schtick for you. The one-liners are similarly computer-generated. Usually they’re little more than puns about how an enemy’s weapon just got used against him like when Arnold is asked what happened to Buzzsaw, the chainsaw guy, and says, “He had to split.” That’s lazy. Sadly puns come in two categories: bad and horribly bad. Most are the latter. I was left slack-jawed when Arnold screamed at the cameras, “Sub-zero? More like plain zero.” All of this random theming, lazy writing, and bad acting takes place in a series of sets that look absolutely disjointed - like, came from different films disjointed. Yet the characters just walk from one to another between scenes. One second they’re in the streets with the nocturnal dirt people, another minute they’re right next to Richard Dawson in the studio audience, and then up in the control booth. No walls, no rules, no travel time.
So if you haven’t seen The Running Man, what are you waiting for? Even if you don’t like it, you’ll be more prepared than most are for the future! (Five months from now.)