The Running Man (1987): A Review (Review #2064)

THE RUNNING MAN (1987)

Sometimes, it is best to give audiences what they want. I do not know if that means seeing people killed in gruesome ways. However, that is part of the premise of The Running Man, a solid and entertaining action picture that knows what it is and goes with it.

Los Angeles, 2017. America is a dystopian police state with no jobs and an oppressed population. Military officer Benjamin Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has been ordered to fire upon a group of rioters asking for food. Richards, seeing that the protesters are both unarmed and filled with women and children, flat-out refuses. His helicopter is soon overtaken by the rest of the crew that will obey this order. 

Eighteen months later, Richards is imprisoned at the Wilshire Detention Center. He is billed as "the Butcher of Bakersfield", blamed for the massacre that he actually fought to stop. The video proof has been altered to convince the public that Richards did indeed kill unarmed civilians. However, Richards engineers a daring escape. Aiding him are tech whiz Harold Weiss (Marvin J. McEntyre) and resistance fighter William Laughlin (Yaphet Kotto). Richards wants only to escape and has no interest in the attempt to overthrow the repressive government.

He goes to his brother's apartment only to find that there is a new resident there. It is Amber Mendez (Maria Conchita Alonso), who writes jingles for ICS, the government-run television network. Richards forces Amber to help him try to escape. That attempt fails, but that is a blessing to someone else. Damon Killian (Richard Dawson) is the king of ICS as host of Running Man, the biggest hit on television. Working with the Justice Department, Killian is the emcee who literally launches the unwilling contestants to a contained area where they must try to escape before they are killed. Following the contestants, all of whom are convicted criminals, are large men known as Stalkers. Richards, as the so-called Butcher of Bakersfield, will bring in the highest ratings.

Richards is shocked to find that Weiss and Laughlin will be forced to join him in the literal death field. He is more shocked when Amber is thrown in, she having discovered the truth and tried to expose it. It will take all of Benjamin Richards' physical and mental skills to defeat the various Stalkers. This will lead to the revolutionaries finally having a chance to reveal the truth to a mislead population. It will also mean a final confrontation with Damon Killian. 

Fortunately, the world of The Running Man did not fully come to pass. The first adaptation of Stephen King's novel (written under the pen name Richard Bachman) was set thirty years from when the film premiered. As someone who had not seen The Running Man until now, it is interesting how in some ways, our world now is not too far removed from how The Running Man envisioned it.  

Two years after The Running Man was released, the television series American Gladiators took the nation by storm. While I think American Gladiators had been in development before The Running Man started production, there are curious similarities. Both feature amateurs facing off against more physically imposing figures meant to stop them. Both had colorful names. American Gladiators had figures like Hawk and Nitro. The Running Man had Stalkers named Buzzsaw (Gus Rethwisch) and the opera-singing Dynamo (Erland Van Lidth). Two other Stalkers, who were more cameos than major players, were Fireball and Captain Freedom. They were played by Jim Brown and Jesse Venture, performers who would be recognized by audiences.  

Contemporary audiences would have recognized certain elements in The Running Man that they would be familiar with from television at the time. Part of the television Running Man show included a gaggle of dancing beauties. This would be similar to the television series Solid Gold, which featured pop songs and a group of choreographed dancers. 

Perhaps the best and shrewdest element in making The Running Man highly believable is in casting Richard Dawson as Running Man's impresario Damon Killian. Dawson at the time was best known to audiences as the host of Family Feud. As such, audiences would know him as a game show host. It lent to the credibility of the story. 

The temptation to see Dawson's performance as almost a send-up of himself should be avoided. Dawson was not just a game show host but a trained actor. He was playing a fully formed character, not a variation of himself. This Killian was a true villain. He was outwardly charming and grandiose. Off screen though, he was equally ruthless, uncaring and evil. Dawson gives a standout performance in The Running Man. He never went over-the-top in playing Killian as loony or cartoonish. Instead, Killian was coldly efficient and calculating. 

Director Paul Michael Glaser knew that he was not making a deep exploration of the evils of television. This is not Network, though I think that it has similar elements in how television has dulled people's minds. We got good though not great action scenes. We got winking quips thanks to Stephen E. de Souza's screenplay. There was a lot of winking to the audience in this respect.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger gives his signature line "I'll be back" before getting sent to the death zone, Dawson's Killian has a great retort. "Only in a rerun", he snidely tells him. I suppose that audiences would expect Schwarzenegger to break out the line that made him famous. It was nice to see someone respond to it.

The quips kept coming. When Amber asks Richards, "What happened to Buzzsaw?", he replies, "He had to split". That was a clear pun on how we saw Buzzsaw killed. It was funny albeit cheesy. It perhaps should be expected. The tongue-in-cheek manner continued in other ways. As the credits to the Running Man television show played behind Killian, we saw that the production crew were not taking this too seriously. "Make Up: Paint Your Face", "Music: Do Ray Me" and "Titles: Type M Wrong" could be read. Glaser must have known that people could read them based on how the camera was placed. De Souza knew what he was adding.  

The film is in some ways a bit of a lark. Fleetwood Mac's Mick Fleetwood appears in a small role as Mic, the head of the underground movement. Dweezil Zappa also appears as Stevie, another revolutionary. Jim Brown and Jesse Ventura were also aware that The Running Man was a mix of menace and mirth. There is something a bit surprising in seeing Jesse Ventura in spandex doing aerobics.

Other actors were playing this more straightforward. Maria Conchita Alonso played Amber as someone evolving from accepting what was presented without question to someone who knew she was being lied to. Yaphet Kotto and Marvin J. McEntyre brought some gravitas to their roles of Laughlin and Weiss respectively. Arnold Schwarzenegger was there for the action scenes, able to rattle off quips and disbelief effectively.  

The premise of The Running Man is not as outrageous at it might appear. Granted, The Amazing Race does not involve people getting killed. However, the issues of Artificial Intelligence and AI imagery, manipulation of information and being entertained to death have only grown more concerning. This is not to say that The Running Man was prescient about how people could be deceived to believe what is not true. It still moves well and should please action fans. However, looking back on it now almost forty years later, I think The Running Man works both as pure entertainment and a warning about entertainment itself. 

DECISION: B+