After finally getting round to watching The Running Man after many recommendations from a colleague, I was slightly underwhelmed, which to be honest, was what I expected. I'm not particularly a fan of action films, let alone those from the 80s, which I have always found admittedly fun and ambitious, but inescapably shallow and surface heavy on the whole. I was happy with the start of the film, with a well realised dystopian set-up. Other similarly dark films are called into memory, for instance the cityscapes have the look and feel of things like Blade Runner and Warriors. Within which world we are introduced to a world of violence, evil corporations and mostly a survival based TV game show, all of which reminded me of the original Japanese Battle Royale (which works on the same TV show concept) and the 70s classic Network (that focuses on the humanity downfall theme)
In truth, this world building and introduction is the strength of the film, once we are fully incorporated, the action takes over, which was always going to be less interesting to me, but, those were the times. Talking of the times, this is dripping in 80s Hollywood cliches; synth music, OTT stunts, flashy props and sets etc. It makes it recognisably from that era but means it really doesn't age well. Gladly, it is unpredictable in it's detail, however it is lacking emotional core to be totally engaging and memorable.
Acting wise things are as to be expected, on the poor side. I think the best character acting performance comes from Richard Dawson as Damon Killian, the corrupt TV executive, who is convincingly cutthroat and macabre. But then there's the muscular elephant in the room. Arnie of course has (to quote Hanninal Lecter) oodles of charisma and is a decent physical actor but doesn't have the gift of natural line delivery. It is ever so slightly cringey to watch him trying to lend certain lines any emotional depth, an issue which is hard to ignore. Playing a robot in terminator suited him (he even repeats his famous Terminator line 'I'll be back') You could get away with this kind of one dimensional performance in this type of 80s action, which has just never done it for me, and The Running Man isn't going to change that. It's just one of those 5-6 out of 10 films that reminds you of other, much better films you could be watching.
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