The Running Man (1987)

With the remake from Edgar Wright about to hit cinemas this year, it seemed like the perfect time to rewatch the original at the cinema. My original rating was a 3.5 but seeing it on the big screen has made me increase my rating to a 4. Set in the futuristic year of 2019, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Ben Richard’s who after refusing to fire on innocent people is sentenced to a detention zone and after escaping he is recaptured and made to appear on a very popular show, the titular Running Man.  Then along with Laughlin (Yaphet Kotto) and Weiss (Marvin J. McIntyre) they have to try and outrun the chasers. Later on they are joined by Maria Conchita Alonso’s Amber as they also try to tell the truth to the citizens.

This is a great film that might not have aged well as some films from the 1980’s but that is part of the charm. There are plenty of Arnie puns which got a great reaction in the screening that I attended. Arnie was never the greatest actor but his physic and charm helped an awful lot. Jesse Ventura’s role was brief but he has a great scene where he comes in looking like a bad sci-fi robot. There are a couple of cheesy clips of him as a workout instructor but I was just distracted by his hair piece. Being a wrestling fan in the 1980’s and early 1990’s it was always great to see a wrestler in a movie. Yaphet Kotto is another familiar face although I know him really from Alien which I didn’t see until just a few years ago and as one of the people that helps Ben Richard’s, you want to see him make it to the end but sadly in these sort of films the nice people that don’t look like Alonso probably wont make it which is s shame. Speaking of Alonso, she was fine. Her character has an attack of conscience once she realises that the government has been lying. It does seem like an oversight that she is the witness to what happened at the airport and yet isn’t told to keep quiet or they find out what she knows and then fits a fake narrative to make it less obvious that they made things up Alonso is the romantic interest for Arnie but to be hones they don’t really have any chemistry that makes a relationship seem genuine although that is probably more down to Arnie. The real star of the film is Richard Dawson as Damon Killian. He acts like he is the greatest person in the history of the world and hides behind the fact that he has a contract with the government to basically do whatever he wants. The reason why the film is as good as it is is that we have a villain that is so horrible that you want the good guy to be victorious. 

I do like the gameshow element of The Running Man with Killian intereacting with the audience and giving them prizes and its hilarious to see what constitutes a prize in their 2019. If Bradley Walsh or Alexander Armstrong gave a contestant or audience member a board game version of the show that thing would end up on eBay before the episode aired. Asking the audience what chaser they want does seem to be a bit of a risk because that person would have to be in the right place at the right time. The plot is fairly straightforward and even if you had never seen this film before you could still walk out where it would go but you watch these type of films to see Arnie beat/kill people in fun ways and then put them down with a pun. Otherwise what is the point of an Arnie film. Despite a lot of the visuals not holding up and the idea of what 2019 would be like not matching up with reality, the film does feel like we aren’t that far away from it in 2025. Now whether the Edgar Wright version will be as good as the 1987 version is doubtful but I think that this film has stood as one of Arnie’s best films alongside Terminator and Predator. 

The Running Man 1987 is an entertaining film that is rewatchable many many times. The story is straight forward enough but the action scenes are well done and its directed with the sort of energy that most films of this era have.