Critic Reviews for The Running Man (2025)

100

The TelegraphRobbie CollinNov 11, 2025

It’s perhaps Wright’s first feature to feel, in a positive way, like the work of a director for hire: every flourish and trick here isn’t in service of a singular creative vision so much as a great, rumbling excitement machine. Read full review

88

Chris KlimekNov 13, 2025

The Brit who brought us such violent delights as “Shaun of the Dead” and “Baby Driver” has just the right mixture of empathy and impishness to turn King’s cautionary tale into a would-be blockbuster with integrity. Read full review

80

David FearNov 11, 2025

For all of the multiplex-friendly fun Wright’s conjuring with this over-the-top spin on dystopian sci-fi blockbusters, the prevailing feeling here is dread. Most filmmakers would have diluted the grit and genuine sense of moral free-fall. Wright doubles the dosage. Every adrenaline rush comes with a chaser of low rage and simmering despair. Read full review

80

EmpireJohn NugentNov 11, 2025

Edgar Wright’s biggest film yet feels like something out of both the future and the 1980s: a scathing satire that’s also a lot of fizzy blockbuster fun. Read full review

80

ColliderAidan KelleyNov 11, 2025

All of Wright's movies only get better and better on every rewatch, given the immense attention to detail, and revisits of The Running Man will undoubtedly garner more appreciation for a movie that's already one of the most crowd-pleasing pictures of the year. Read full review

75

Katie WalshNov 13, 2025

Wright makes the argument that in such a dystopian, fascist state, there are only a few things that will save us: class solidarity, physical media and literacy. It’s a powerful and potent message that cuts through any and all of the bombastic busyness of The Running Man. Read full review

75

LooperDominic GriffinNov 11, 2025

The Running Man is such an enjoyable race while you're running it, but once you make it past the finish line and start reflecting on the experience, it leaves too much to be desired. Read full review

75

Brian TruittNov 11, 2025

A lively, satirical stab at modern-day reality TV, scary big-brother technology, cultural dissension and rampant income inequality, all slathered in blood-soaked ultraviolence and bonkers charm. And don’t worry, old-school Arnold lovers: It’s so insanely different from the original movie that you can adore one without losing any love for the other. Read full review

75

IndieWireDavid EhrlichNov 11, 2025

Its ending might cop out of the novel’s most ghoulishly prescient detail, but that isn’t enough to completely neuter the rare Hollywood product that dares to stoke our anger rather than mollify it — that reminds us that our rage is a valuable resource worth a lot more than money, and one that we can’t afford to waste on each other. Read full review

75

Liz Shannon MillerNov 11, 2025

The Running Man does also offer a more anarchic message than we might be used to from our standard Hollywood blockbusters, but that message gets drowned out, leaving behind a loud violent romp that's almost a bit too on the nose for these loud violent times of ours. Read full review

70

Staff (Not Credited)Nov 11, 2025

It’s a very well put-together film, and more so than not, it’s full of charming performances, clever little details and some less-outlandish-than-I’d-like social commentary. Even though Edgar Wright’s stamp isn’t clearly on every sequence like some of his previous work, The Running Man sprints where it needs to, giving Glen Powell his first chance to be a full-fledged action hero. Read full review

70

Screen RantAlex HarrisonNov 11, 2025

Edgar Wright and Glen Powell are consummate entertainers, and they made this dystopian Stephen King movie as fun and guilt-free as they could. Read full review

67

Thom ErnstNov 13, 2025

Wright may have made The Running Man the way he and King always wanted — just not necessarily the one we expected. Read full review

67

Richard WhittakerNov 13, 2025

The ending simply lacks the guts to remain committed to King’s sociopolitical fury, and what starts as Wright’s best post-Cornetto Trilogy film ends up as his weakest. But when it’s really up to speed, The Running Man laps the competition. Read full review

67

Jesse HassengerNov 11, 2025

[Wright] continues to prove more adept at tightly weaving his thematic concerns into genre-friendly comedy. Making a muscular, fun-enough adaptation of The Running Man is at once beneath him and beyond him. Read full review

67

The Film StageAlistair RyderNov 11, 2025

The most spectacular sequences here are when [Wright] allows himself to let loose, working towards his instincts rather than against them. Read full review

64

PolygonTasha RobinsonNov 11, 2025

Edgar Wright has built his reputation on steering his movies into unlikely, exciting places. In The Running Man, it rarely feels like anyone’s hand is on the wheel. Read full review

64

Jarrod JonesNov 11, 2025

Wright’s flair for freakazoids remains undeniable, but his focus on rebellion obscures the cruel machinery that incites it. That reluctance to linger too long in the muck of this world—to give perceptible shape to the apathy that creates this level of soulless greed—leaves Ben fighting an abstraction. It’s a devil we’re familiar with, just not one this film is willing to face head-on. Read full review

63

The Travers TakePeter TraversNov 14, 2025

Glen Powell runs for his life to win a reality TV jackpot in a remake of a dystopian Stephen King thriller that comes on like gangbusters—until it loses steam. Read full review

63

James BerardinelliNov 13, 2025

Given some of the dubious decisions made in crafting the 1987 film, there was ample opportunity to make vast improvements. Unfortunately, this Running Man fails to take advantage and, while stumbling on approach to the finish line, it trips and falls in the final moments. Read full review

63

Dominic BaezNov 13, 2025

There’s a lot to like in The Running Man, so it’s all the more disappointing that its most interesting elements get such short shrift. As a humorous action film, it’s an enjoyable experience. As a social commentary on a dystopian America, it mostly just trips over itself. Read full review

63

RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzNov 11, 2025

There’s no compelling evidence onscreen that the huddled masses that the script is so concerned with are truly moved and edified by watching Ben’s rebellious acts and anti-capitalist slogans on TV, or if he’s just their latest shiny object of distraction. Read full review

60

NMEJames MottramNov 14, 2025

Powell is a very watchable everyman, convincingly demonstrating the man of the people integrity of his character. There’s great work too from Colman Domingo as the show’s slick presenter Bobby T and Michael Cera, who plays a loose-cannon contact that Richards makes during his quest for survival. Wright also handles the explosive action well, orchestrating elaborate, kinetic set pieces that throb with excitement. Read full review

60

Alison WillmoreNov 14, 2025

Wright’s movie, aside from its mess of an ending, is a propulsive and generally fun affair that sends Powell careering around the Eastern Seaboard like the Tom Cruise successor he’s so determined to become, even if he’s not entirely plausible as a guy who’s volcanic with anger. Read full review

60

Manohla DargisNov 13, 2025

There’s nothing wrong (or incorrect!) about either Wright’s desire to please or the righteousness, and at times you can sense a bit of anger wafting off the screen, even if Wright and Powell mostly seem to be having a very good time. Read full review

60

Nikki BaughanNov 11, 2025

This Running Man could have been a powerful anarchist fable for our turbulent times but fun as it is, it runs out of steam before making any lasting impact. Read full review

60

The GuardianPeter BradshawNov 11, 2025

The Running Man sometimes feels retro-futurist and steampunky, though it is always watchable and buoyant. Wright has hit a confident stride. Read full review

60

The Film VerdictAlonso DuraldeNov 11, 2025

For all the targets that director and co-writer Edgar Wright hits with the story’s political and media satire, he allows the pacing to go slack, turning what should feel like an escalating set of stakes into an episodic series of vignettes. Read full review

60

Radio TimesJeremy AspinallNov 11, 2025

Powell proves to be a charismatic hero, bristling with anger but also able to stay alive thanks to his own ingenuity and much-needed assistance from those he meets on his travels, such as cameoing William H Macy, Emilia Jones (CODA) and Michael Cera (star of Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs the World), whose mercurial rebel lives in an elaborately booby-trapped bolt-hole worthy of Rambo. Read full review

58

The PlaylistMarshall ShafferNov 11, 2025

The film ultimately feels like little more than hired hand work from Wright. What he lacks in compositional vision, he tries to make up for in clever casting (Colman Domingo, William H. Macy, and Lee Pace all deliver their best), as well as some simple gags. But like the people in Ben Richards’ fictional dystopia discover, amusing ourselves to death can only go so far. “The Running Man” settles for being good when, if the topline talent had leaned into their fortes, it could have been truly great. Read full review

58

William BibbianiNov 11, 2025

The fact that it's released by Paramount plays like a punchline, and it’s unclear who’s getting punched. Read full review

55

The Daily BeastNick SchagerNov 11, 2025

Largely faithful but unwilling to pick a funny or nasty lane, it’s the most impersonal film of its writer/director’s career, and a revolutionary thriller that too often falls back on establishment conventions. Read full review

54

Barry HertzNov 12, 2025

Presented with every opportunity to say or do something remotely new or compelling, Wright, typically a talented stylist, elects to shrug his shoulders, delivering a wafer-thin confection that is aggressively disinterested in both ideas and action. Read full review

50

Odie HendersonNov 12, 2025

Director Edgar Wright’s version is a more serious affair that not only has a duller hero than its predecessor, it’s also a half-hour longer. Read full review

50

Jake CoyleNov 12, 2025

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. Read full review

50

G. Allen JohnsonNov 11, 2025

It’s hard to make a two-plus-hour chase movie like this compelling, but Wright gives it a go by peppering the cast with brief appearances by characters far more interesting who help Ben along his way. Read full review

50

Owen GleibermanNov 11, 2025

It hangs together and mostly obeys the rules of mainstream commercial cinema. Yet it’s clear that what drew Wright to the project was his infatuation with the sci-fi sociology of a retro-future USA. Read full review

50

Next Best PictureGiovanni LagoNov 11, 2025

At the heart of it, perhaps Wright just wasn’t the right fit for this story, as many of us had hoped he would be. That being said, what he’s able to get out of Colman Domingo as “The Running Man” host Bobby T is worth the price of a ticket alone. If anything, like most films, it could’ve used more of Domingo. Read full review

50

David RooneyNov 11, 2025

Wright seems almost constrained by a film that ends up neither as compelling nor as deep nor as wildly entertaining as it seems to believe. Read full review

50

SlashfilmChris EvangelistaNov 11, 2025

For all his skills, Wright seemingly can't pin down what he wants "The Running Man" to be. The action isn't very exciting, the satire is unoriginal, and the over-reliance on weird product placement (both Liquid Death and Monster Energy get distracting shout-outs here) make the entire picture feel manufactured. I had high hopes that Wright could get "The Running Man" across the finish line, but the film stumbles right out of the gate. Read full review

50

Jake ColeNov 11, 2025

In flinching at the end, The Running Man ultimately becomes akin to the very thing it criticizes: a hollow, mollifying image of empowerment that distracts from the logical conclusions of its nihilistic premise. Read full review

42

The Film MavenKristen LopezNov 11, 2025

There are fits and spurts of '80s action cheese but, for the most part, the script is wildly inconsistent in terms of tone while characters are wafer thin caricatures. Read full review

40

Amy NicholsonNov 13, 2025

There’s little urgency or outrage. Instead of a funhouse mirror of what could be, it’s merely a smudged reflection of what is. Read full review

40

Stephanie ZacharekNov 12, 2025

The Running Man, directed by Edgar Wright and adapted from Stephen King’s 1982 novel of the same name, is dark all right. It’s also garishly obvious, and though it grabs for laughs here and there, it has almost zero wit. Read full review

40

Phil de SemlyenNov 12, 2025

It’s a movie that got up on the wrong side of the bed and compensated with four quadruple espressos. Read full review

40

David JenkinsNov 12, 2025

The brash message of the film may amount to little more than “smash the system”, but it’s a message that Wright has ignored in a film that sorely lacks for imagination and edge. Read full review

40

The IndependentClarisse LoughreyNov 11, 2025

The eerie prescience of Stephen King’s dystopian source material – written in 1972 and set, of all years, in 2025 – has been wiped from this bland reboot, which also seems to know it’s miscast its leading man. Read full review

40

Molly EdwardsNov 11, 2025

Some fun action and Glen Powell's star power aren't enough to energize a muddled, poorly paced ride with thinly drawn characters and an inconsistent world that wastes its abundant potential. Read full review

38

Movie NationRoger MooreNov 14, 2025

The film’s pacing is stumbling and the longer it goes on, the less urgency we feel in that chase. Read full review

38

Johnny OleksinskiNov 12, 2025

Where is Wright’s mastery of tone and zany-but-unnerving quick-cut style? It’s been replaced by a cacophony of assembly-line sci-fi noise in a blah “Blade Runner” that, depending on the scene, is either stupidly serious or seriously stupid. Read full review

30

Kyle SmithNov 14, 2025

Mr. Powell remains one of today’s most promising leading men, but he’s running in place here. Read full review

20

The TimesKevin MaherNov 11, 2025

It all ends with a grossly emetic monologue about how evil mass media is trying to “make us hate each other so they can steal from us”. And The Running Man is not part of the mass media how? Still, who doesn’t love Shaun of the Dead? Read full review