Movie Review: Time has outrun this ‘Running Man’

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It’s always interesting when time overtakes the dystopias of the past. In Stephen King’s 1982 novel “The Running Man,” the United States has fallen into a totalitarian state, divided between haves and have-nots, where all movements can be surveilled and realistic video propaganda is easily generated. King’s book was set in the year 2025.

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Edgar Wright’s new big-screen adaptation is fittingly but awkwardly timed. Arriving in the year of King’s imagined dystopia, its near-future has little in it that isn’t already plausible today, making this “Running Man” — while fleet of foot in action — feel a step, or two, behind.

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“The Running Man,” of course, has already begat one movie. Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 film starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, the young father who out of financial desperation auditions for a lethal reality show where survival for 30 days means a $1 billion payday. (The movie was set in the distant year of 2017.) Times have changed, though. Wright’s film stars Glen Powell as Richards, a fairly exponential upgrade in smirking charisma.

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This is, for sure, a dystopia with a genial spin. That’s not only the case with the dashing and overweening Powell but with Wright, a playful genre practitioner whose approach to apocalypse (“Shaun of the Dead”) is, by nature, comic. From the start, the darkest shades of King’s book have been snuffed out of this blandly entertaining remake that swaps out the brutalist 1980s nihilism of the Schwarzenegger movie for a satirical portrait of America lacking in bite and prescience.

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It’s not like the 1987 “Running Man” was so great, either. But at least it locked into a tone and stuck with it. Wright’s movie has flashes of flamboyance that help, but it struggles to balance such violent science fiction with funny, over-the-top farce (care of Colman Domingo and Michael Cera ). That was basically the task, and success, of the “Hunger Games” films, which owed plenty to “The Running Man.” That’s one of the hard things about reaching backward for futuristic visions. “The Running Man” and its ilk have been getting ripped off for decades now. (Go back further and Richard Connell, author of 1924’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” probably has the biggest gripe.)

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In the opening scenes of “The Running Man,” Richards has run out of employment options. At every turn, he’s been labeled insubordinate or has flirted too much with union representation for his radiation-exposed colleagues. With a baby home sick and a wife (Jayme Lawson) considering taking a shift at a dangerous nightclub, he resolves to try out for the many reality shows put on by the Network, the all-powerful, government-controlled media monolith. Richards strides from the grim and gritty Co-Op City through a checkpoint and into a gleaming, militantly policed metropolis. Though he’s sworn off participating in “The Running Man,” it’s the only show his particular combination of rage and sarcasm qualifies him for. In a word association test, he replies: Freedom? “No.” Anarchy? “When?”

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The job is offered to him by the Network head, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin). Brolin is especially good as the slick, lying-through-his-teeth Killian, a fine addition to the many mean authority figures Brolin has played over the years, from the studio fixer of “Hail, Caesar!” to the police officer of “Inherent Vice,” or even the supervillain of “Avengers: Endgame.” He’s a pliable actor with many other modes, but Brolin may be the defining rock-jawed face of corrupt power of our time. (That goes, too, for his demagogue priest in the upcoming “Wake Up Dead: A Knives Out Mystery.” )