The Running Man
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: November 14, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 52 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
26
Negative:
4

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
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
New York Magazine (Vulture)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
The New York TimesManohla 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
Screen DailyNikki 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
TheWrapWilliam 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
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)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
Boston GlobeOdie 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
The Associated PressJake 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
San Francisco ChronicleG. 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
VarietyOwen 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
The Hollywood ReporterDavid 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
Slant MagazineJake 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
Los Angeles TimesAmy 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
TimeStephanie 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
Time OutPhil 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
Little White LiesDavid 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
Total FilmMolly 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
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