Screenhead

So only recently, the folks out at Lions Gate released a set of old Schwartzenegger films in a big box set called the Arnold Schwartzenegger collection.  The California governor was in a LOT of movies, so I guess it was really only a matter of figuring out exactly which ones to put in the set.  This is the first of a series of four we’ll be discussing, The Running Man.

Set in a futuristic, heavily dystopian 2019 Los Angeles where the government has pretty much thrown the Constitution clean out the window and no one really cares about things like “rights” or “civil liberties”, TV is king.  And no king is higher than Damon Killian, the host of America’s number one television show, The Running Man.  Set in a massive underground arena created from the big earthquake of 1997, anyone the government doesn’t much like (including hackers, schoolteachers and cops gone rogue) are turned into Runners and dropped therein where they are pursued by agents called Stalkers.  Heavily armed and permitted to kill whoever they find in the maze of tunnels and set pieces, the Runners almost never survive.  Those who do are given incredible prizes, including but not limited to exotic trips and their own freedom.  But as you might well expect, the game isn’t exactly on the level.  Thus, when a group of Runners who have the side goal of taking down the entire goverment are plunged neck-deep into the frenzy that is The Running Man, they discover that it may not be just a fight for their lives…but rather the chance they’ve been waiting for.

First off, this was a Stephen King book.

I say “was” of course, because the resemblance between that and the movie is pretty much purely coincidental.  This is not what Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) had in mind, so any attempt to judge this movie on the book’s standard will meet with catastrophic failure.

Thankfully, though, despite the fact that they’ve made a butchery out of the translation, what’s left behind is a compelling dystopian sci-fi / action hybrid that doesn’t strain the suspense of disbelief very hard and definitely entertains, albeit in a very much over-the-top fashion.  There’s also some extra relevance here, in a post 9/11 society, not to mention a society that’s increasingly obsessed with reality television, asking some really deep questions like how valuable are our rights and freedoms, and how much of “reality TV” is actually all that real to  begin with?

Philosophical issues aside, there’s really no doubt that The Running Man provides plenty of thrills and action to spare, and despite the fact that it’s well over twenty years old now (twenty TWO, as a matter of fact–ABC used to LOVE this thing for Sunday night movies in a deeply edited form), it still doesn’t even really look that dated.  That may be the biggest surprise of the whole thing, in all honesty–even after twenty-two years, The Running Man still manages to deliver the goods.  If it’s still good after twenty-two years, I can’t help but think it’ll be good for ANOTHER twenty.