In the 1970s, a simpler time, we had NETWORK, Paddy Chayefsky’s disturbingly prescient fever-dream of a black comedy about a television network run amorally amok thanks to a viewing audience with the attention span of a nudibranch and an alarming lack of critical thinking skills. We laughed and comforted ourselves that such extremes could never actually happen. Except they sorta did, but instead of The Mad Prophet Howard Beal driven to that madness by the medium’s venality, we received pundits of various extremist political stripes, ruling the airwaves with bile and vitriol and a great deal for you on prepper supplies. In Edgar Wright’s take on Stephen King’s THE RUNNING MAN, we are again presented with a television network run amorally amok as it chases ratings without the restraints of competition nor of ethics. This time, though, it’s the only network, and with the virtual rule of the oligarchs finds full fruition.
It is a fine film, with a focus more sharply political that the cartoonish 80s incarnation, and as a result, far more troubling. We watch the eponymous top-rated game show incite blood-lust among its audience, and the idea of laughing and finding comfort in the fact that such extremes could never actually happen seems somehow less realistic. There has been, after all, a call for television executions, and, well, let’s hope the slope is not as slippery as the more pessimistic among us might think.
But I digress.
We find ourselves in an economically dystopian near future, where the have-nots bicker over borrowed designer shoes and the have-nots, even the ones who work, live in squalor, penury, and a lack of effective health care. It’s that last part that drives Ben Richards (Glen Powell) to the desperate measure of trying out for one of the many game shows telecast by The Network, as in the only source for news and entertainment operating. Sure, the participants in the line-up of options pretty much all face bodily harm, even death, but Ben’s two-year-old needs a real doctor, he’s just been fired (again) for protesting an excess of radiation in the workplace, and the family can’t carry on with only his wife’s salary waitressing at one of the proliferation of “gentlemen’s club” that litter the landscape. He travels from that squalor, through security gates, to the elite part of town, where he aces a series of qualifying tests and is offered the one show he promised his wife (Jayme Lawson) he would not do. Of course, it’s The Running Man, where the point is to take part in the most dangerous game as elite from a privatized militia, aided by tips from the public (who get paid for informing), hunt Ben for 30 days. If he lives that long he gets the grand prize of a billion new dollars, and a life of insouciant wealth. If he loses, well, there are consolation prizes for his family.
Mr. Wright gives us a harder edge than the previous version by keeping the action more grounded in reality. The action sequences obey the laws of physics and of credulity as Ben finds himself in a series of near misses and clever escapes from the hunters led by the masked McCone (Lee Pace). Which is not to say there isn’t some piquant inventiveness, including Ben swinging naked from a cord in an increasingly desperate attempt to evade both the hunters and the drone cameras that buzz around capturing the thrills for a live audience. His scream of “stop filming me” might be the new catch phrase on a par with “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” One can hope.
As for The Network, the tropes they use to mourn the death of Ben’s hunters, and to whip up the viewing audience against him with fabrications and innuendo in quest for higher ratings for its highest rated show have a painfully familiar feel. When the formula for success is explained to Ben by a rebel faction that offers him refuge, it, too has that uncomfortable familiarity. This is not speculative fiction, this is extrapolation from our own culture, right down to the smarmy network executive, played to the hilt by a toothy Josh Brolin, and the show’s host (Coleman Domingo), a clothes horse ready with a glib quip when the kill happens, and carefully calculated maudlin sentimentality for the tragic toll of human life lost in pursuit of the show’s manufactured villain. Life lost as collateral damage from the hunters themselves. Familiarity, however, does nothing to lessen the impact, particularly the sight of ragged people lined up in affluent surroundings ready to surrender their dignity and maybe their lives for a shot at the good life that they see on a strangely (again) familiar reality show featuring a family devoted to luxury goods and high drama, a good life that they cannot hope to attain in any other way.
Bleak, yes, but not without the comic relief of a rebel (Michael Cera) seething too long in the rural stretches of Maine; the suitably eccentric mechanic (William H. Macy) who deals in vintage televisions that don’t look back at the viewer and fake identity cards; and the innocent bystander (Emilia Jones) in an expensive scarf who is dragged into a reality check that will open her eyes. Plus, a wicked shout-out to the 80s version, a call-back from Mr. Brolin’s career, and an underground content provider with 80s special effects to bring home his message. Through it all, there is Powell, a charmer of a quantifiably angry man soldiering on because there is no way but forward. Like Howard Beale in the ci-mentioned NETWORK, he is also mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore, but he’s far cannier. Credibly athletic and certainly smarter than the network gives him credit for, Powell makes Ben not just engaging, but captivating for more than just a chiseled physique. He is the embodiment of wish fulfilment for the crushed of spirit. That he is also eye candy, well, that’s a bonus.
THE RUNNING MAN raises the stakes by making its premise less fantasy and more prophetic. Smartly written with genuine suspense and surprises, it asks little of us credulity-wise beyond believing that sprays of bullets unleashed by professionals will always miss when it comes to our hero. Never mind. It’s a small concession and a painless one at that for a fun film that is also a clarion call to storm a rampart or two.
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