Review of “The Running Man” (1987)

The Running Man (1987)
Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Richard Dawson, Yaphet Kotto

For some reason, this week’s Saturday night “double-feature” was more random than usual. After watching A Boy and His Dog (the only Netflix watch instantly sci-fi film Aline and I could agree on, since neither one of us knew anything about it), we ended up seeing 1987’s The Running Man because Aline got it confused with Freejack. Watching this adaptation of a Stephen King novel (penned as Richard Bachman) at the time, who would have guessed that Arnold Schwarzenegger would one day end up as governor of California, Jesse Ventura governor of Minnesota and, most important of all, that the choreographer, one Paula Abdul, would end up as a judge on American Idol!

Anyway, for a fun, “bad” sci-fi experience, you can’t go wrong with a 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger science-fiction movie, and The Running Man does not disappoint. The year is 2017, and “the world economy has collapsed. Food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand. Television is controlled by the state. All art, music and communications are censored.” Oh noes! Hungry and bored, the people are pacified by sadistic reality television shows, the most popular of which, “The Running Man,” features convicts running for their lives from cartoonish stalkers with names such as Professor Subzero, Buzzsaw, Dynamo and Captain Freedom.

In this totalitarian future, no dissent is tolerated, yet somehow there is an underground resistance movement that fights for truth, justice and the old American way. But of course there is, because there’s always a resistance eking out The Future.

Los Angeles, 2017. Though future cities are always awesome, *ahem*, Blade Runner anyone?

The Running Man begins with Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a military helicopter pilot, leading a strike force sent to put down 1,500 civilians engaging in a food riot. Though Ben will later state, “I’m not into politics, I’m into survival,” when ordered to attack the unarmed crowd, he wisely chooses to refuse his orders and abort his mission. There’s a lot of women and children down there and all they want is food for god’s sake!

This action will land Ben in a detention zone and the military-controlled media will pin the massacre on him, labeling him the “Butcher of Bakersfield.” It’s here that he will first encounter the resistance, form “some really close friendships” and engage in a daring prison break that catches the eye of The Running Man’s host. If you can hear the chains clanking as this coaster is brought to the top of track, ignore them—the game show is about to begin.

Though the world has gone to hell-in-a-handbasket and the ruling military has no qualms about massacring innocent people, luckily for us the virtue of the resistance remains untarnished. In one hilarious exchange, resistance members turn away from the television screen and state:
“Can you believe this shit? 24 hours a day.”
“Seven days a week.”
“Don’t listen to it.”
“I worry about the kids… the network shut down the schools. The kids are either in hiding or getting basic training… Brainwashed by the TV.“

See, even in the dystopian future, it’s all about the children.

Climbing for Dollars

The easy morality that comes in exactly two shades is one of my problems with The Running Man as sci-fi. We never learn, nor is it asked, how the world got this way. Other than the fact they’re good people and it’s obvious what good people do, we never learn why the resistance is fighting or how they hope to restore the world. Their master plan primarily seems to consist of finding the “uplink” and broadcasting “the truth.”

Satiric as The Running Man may appear, Network it ain’t. However, it doesn’t seem like it’s trying too hard to make any point other than to be completely over-the-top and have a good time. And toward that end, casting Richard Dawson, the original host of Family Feud, to basically play himself as the corrupt game show host Damon Killian was brilliant. Every scene he’s in is hilarious.

“Hello, this is Killian. Give me the Justice Department, Entertainment Division.”

Ultimately, The Running Man is not good sci-fi nor is it even a particularly good dystopia film, however it’s definitely fun and entertaining. Some of the action bits get a bit long and repetitive, but every scene with Dawson and Ventura is full of win. Despite the violence (all of which is so cartoonish as to be non-offensive) and given its simplistic morality, I think The Running Man would be a great film for teens or for adults wishing to revisit the 80s and their teen years.