Producers: Simon Kinberg, Nira Park and Edgar Wright   Director: Edgar Wright   Screenplay: Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright Cast: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, Lee Pace, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Angelo Gray, Jayme Lawson, Sean Hayes, Katy O’Brian, Martin Herlihy, Karl Glusman, David Zayas, Alex Neustaedter and George Carroll   Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Grade: C-

2025 seems an appropriate year for a remake of “The Running Man”—it was, after all, the chronological setting of the 1982 novel by Stephen King, published under his pseudonym of Richard Bachman.  (King once admitted to writing it over the space of a mere seventy-two hours, ad publishing it with virtually no changes.)   It might seem unfortunate that it’s appearing so soon after Francis Lawrence’s adaptation of another Bachman book, “The Long Walk,” the premise of which was quite similar (though its cruel game involved a slow trudge rather than a hectic chase); but since that movie proved no box office bonanza, it probably won’t matter.

This version by Edgar Wright and his co-writer Michael Bacall is much more faithful to the novel than Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 movie, which was reworked substantially by scripter Steven E. de Souza to meet the expectations of fans of its star Arnold Schwarzenegger.  But fidelity is a relative term.  This “Man” follows the basic plotline of the book pretty closely, but it goes hog-wild with special effects (the sequence with Michael Cera as Elton Parrakis, the rebel who aids the hero, is expanded using them to excruciating excess), and of course it can’t abide the bleakness of the ending, instead adding a coda that assuages the present-day audience’s insistence that heroes survive, villains get what they deserve and good triumphs over evil.  As Wilde wisely observed, that is what fiction means.

To rehearse the plot: in a dystopian American of the (here unspecified) future, Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is fired from his job for daring to stand up for workers’ rights.  The loss of income is devastating: his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson) is forced to take on unsavory work, and their little daughter can’t get the medicine she needs to stave off a potentially fatal form of flu.

So Ben decides to try out for a spot on one of the game shows designed by The Network to serve as palliatives for the miserable lower classes.  His anger issues make him a perfect candidate for the most violent and dangerous of the games, in which three contestants are, with the help of the public, chased down and terminated by Hunters, led by masked Evan McCone (Lee Pace).  But the longer they survive over the course of the thirty-day span, the more they earn, and if they manage to make it through the entire month (which, of course, no one ever has), they become billionaires.

Ben’s chosen by the program’s slimy creator Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) as one of the three contestants in the game’s upcoming iteration, introduced by the show’s flamboyant host Bobby T (Colman Domingo) to a raucous studio audience along with reckless Laughlin (Katy O’Brian) and goofy Jansky (Martin Herlihy).  After a stop to acquire forged papers and disguises from Molie (William H. Macy), he tries to hide under an assumed name in a New York hotel.  But his first identity is blown, and he’s off running, winding up at a slum Y in Boston.  He’s found again, escaping only in a fiery blast that the program—doctoring the messages he’s required to send on tape each day—portrays as an act of sadistic terrorism.  Meanwhile hapless Jansky bites the dust.

Fortunately, Ben gets help at this point from Stacey (Angelo Gray), a ghetto kid, and his older brother Bradley (Daniel Ezra), a rebel with connections to a wider network.  They help him escape the city (here in one of those reckless car chases in which they off a couple of pursuing hunters), and after further close calls—and learning that Laughlin has been terminated in a blaze of reckless glory—he finds himself at the home of Parrakis, the son of an honest cop destroyed by his corrupt colleagues, who’s gussied up the place with all manner of cool protective devices.  But they’re betrayed by his mother (Sandra Dickinson), here a ragged-haired old crone brainwashed by conspiracy-fueled TV coverage, and those devices aren’t enough.

In the aftermath of that effects-laden melee and another chase, Ben finds himself tracked down to a freeway by the ever-searching drones and takes Amelia Williams (Emilia Jones), a prosperous but dimwitted woman, hostage in her SUV.  She’s initially horrified, but is convinced about the program’s perfidy when she’s herself depicted falsely via AI manipulation, and accompanies her captor aboard a waiting plane along with McCone, unmasked at Killian’s orders.  This is the setting of the final act, in which Killian tries to seduce Richards into joining his team; after he refuses, the aircraft becomes the setting for a long, dragged-out fight with McCone and the flight crew that leaves Williams parachuting to the ground and Ben maneuvering the plane against Killian.

So much is amplified King.  But Wright and Bacall, knowing full well that the book’s close would never conform to today’s audience’s aversion to bleak endings, add their own coda which takes advantage of the novel’s image of the downtrodden masses turning in Richards’ favor to present him, via some inexplicable sleight of hand, into the leader of a revolution against a cruel system.  It’s a pandering close that King, though listed as an executive producer, could hardly have warmly embraced.

If the reworking of the material feels compromised by modern expectations in both style and narrative, the execution is also seriously flawed.  Though Wright manages to throw in some of the mordant humor for which he’s known (one can appreciate Ben’s reply, when pretending to be a priest, to a guy who asks if he’ll go to hell for using a condom), he mostly plays things according to the tentpole playbook, and gives his craft crew—production designer Marcus Rowland, costumer Julian Day and cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung—free rein to construct a vision of the future that somehow manages to be both dank and garish.  The special effects supervised by Andrew Whitehurst often come across as murky, especially toward the close, and the crowd scenes are suspiciously small-scaled.  Paul Machliss’ editing frequently seems rushed and slapdash, and Steve Price’s score generically bombastic.

As to the cast, Powell is at best adequate; he’s supposed to be an everyman thrown into situations he’s unequipped to deal with, of course, but he lacks the undefinable something that would overcome a faintly bland aura.  Brolin is even worse: his attempt at grinning villainy falls far short of what Richard Dawson brought to the Schwarzenegger version.  Cera adds more than a touch of mania to his character, and Ezra is a cooly unruffled underground leader, but no one else makes much of an impression.  Jones and Pace are nondescript, and even Macy offers little but generalized gruffness.

The upshot is that despite all the money and talent thrown into the mix, Wright’s “Running Man” turns out to be a pretty flatfooted affair.