The Running Man

The Running Man (1987)

Runtime: 101 minutes

Directed by: Paul Michael Glaser... mostly

Starring: Arnold, Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, Richard Dawson, and various actors playing over the top pro wrestling-like characters, including former pro wrestlers

From: Several low-budget companies

I had no time to see movies on Friday or Saturday night; I saw this last night as yesterday was Arnold's 70th birthday. Oh, and I am not kidding when I mentioned below that Yaphet Kotto now says he has seen aliens before, and I don't mean Aliens:

“By 2017 the world economy has collapsed. Food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand.”

That is part of the opening crawl for the movie; I've seen it posted at various spots on the Internet this year, due to what should be obvious reasons. Unfortunately, the plot of this movie seems not as far-fetched as it did 30 years ago. The crawl also mentions such things as censorship and well, that's not as outlandish now either. Definitely, the stench of “reality” television or game shows involving physical competition were not a thing back in the mid 1980's, but now it's still a popular thing, and is a show where bizarre over the top people try to stop criminals in an abandoned city playing field all that unfathomable now? Look at all the strange “reality” shows we've gotten in recent years and goofball characters... and hell, this game show stages an event and presents something totally phony as real... which is the key thing in that genre, of course.

Sunday (July 30) was the 70th birthday of Arnold Schwarzenegger so I decided to go with this, as I hadn't seen it in many years. Even though in some ways this movie was prescient, I still can't rate it any higher. Arnold is Ben Richards, who works for the government but is asked to do something horrible. He refuses, so the horrible thing happens anyway and he's framed for it. Two years later, he escapes prison but is captured and has to compete on The Running Man gameshow, where he has to avoid being killed by a group of bizarre over the top characters like the chainsaw-wielding Buzzsaw, the electric Dynamo and the fiery Fireball. During all that, trying to expose the truth about the government is a plot point.

Original director Andrew Davis (later of The Fugitive fame) was fired early on for reasons unknown to me; Paul Michael Glaser replaced him, and after the fact the stars said that was not a good decision in hindsight. Maybe the movie would have been better and things would have made more sense or it wouldn't have been uneven and some plot points would be more clear; at least with what we got I can still say the movie is good. There's plenty of violence, wacky Arnold one-liners, familiar faces I enjoyed seeing (Maria Conchita Alonso, the just announced that he was once abducted by aliens Yaphet Kotto*, former pro wrestlers Jessie Ventura & Professor Toru Tanaka, Dweezil Zappa, Mick Fleetwood, Jim Brown) but as everyone else has noted, it was the get of having actor turned famous game show host Richard Dawson play Running Man host Damon Killian that was a big asset for the movie. Damon seems like a nice man but in actuality is not so nice once the cameras are off... I understand that's how Dawson was in real life, but I'll presume he was not an atrocious human being obsessed with ratings like Killian was.

I've never read the Richard Bachman novel this was based on, but it doesn't really matter as it has little to do with the movie. It's not The Lawnmower Man bad but only a few elements from the book were used to make a wacky 80's action film. It definitely is a product of its time between the Harold Faltermeyer score, the clothing, and how some scenes are bathed in blue or red, which I know will please the aesthetic fans. I was happy to tip my cap to Arnold, as I've been watching him for much of my life and I was still happy to see this film again, even if it is flawed.