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The Running Man | Year: 1987 Classification: Action/Adventure Directed: - Paul Michael Glaser Actors/Actresses: - Arnold Schwarzenegger - Maria Conchita Alonso Worth for the last 5 minutes itself ! Trashy looking and predictably fun Arnold vehicle based on a Stephen King novel (which he wrote under the name Richard Bachman) has Arnold as a cop turned into a scape goat for the government to pawn off the murder of protesting civilians who escapes prison, only to be recaptured and forced to play the ultimate reality TV show - "The Running Man", in which he must outwit and overpower a group of sadistic killers called "stalkers" who are armed with razor bladed hockey sticks, chainsaws, death rays and flame throwers. Will he survive? Great movie. BAD POLITICS!!! I am writing this review to rate The Running Man. It's Arnold. It's action-adventure. It's entertaining!!! Nothing in this film to change the social conscious of America or inspire great literary works but who wants that in their boom-boom bang-bang films. The look of the film was, on a whole, dark and sweaty. The music caught my attention as being an odd score for a film of this nature but has a memorable theme. Arnold does another good job and kicking that a$$ and then piling on a one liner or two. Maria Conchita Alonso is a beautiful woman and gives a solid performance. Seeing them together harkens to a Total Recall vibe. Yaphet Kotto of ALIEN fame is on board for a supporting role and Jesse "The Body" Venture and Jim Brown shine in rolls of stalkers on the maniacal gameshow. Richard Dawson makes a dominating persona of the Running Man's host. Entertaining while leading you to believe he is one of the bad guys without any hint of "acting" like a bad guy. The plot has a general feel of Escape from New York. Paul Michael Glaser of Starsky and Hutch TV fame does a fine job of directing this film, coming on board after the first director separated from the project. Some unique shooting angles and motion shots in this one. The reason I give an overall rating of 3 stars is due to this two disc set being spiced up with several Extra Features that are NO FEATURES! The best of the 3 main extras is Meet The Stalkers, a review of the characters that hunt Ben Richards(Arnold). Game Theory tries to relate modern reality shows to the Running Man gameshow and does a poor pr job for the modern shows(Survivor, etc.) clarifying that many participants of these not-so-real "reality" shows are prompted and directed, while many scenarios in the shows are forced upon the participants to draw reactions desired by the creators. How real is that? Lastly...I am OUTRAGED that the Lockdown on Main Street feature, alleged to be a documentary about current national security issues in the post 9/11 world, is really a liberal political statement. I paid my money for this item to be ENTERTAINED/informed and not lectured about how the government, particularly the current administration, is out to rob US citizens of their rights. How this directly relates to the plot is vague at best(the government runs the TV network that airs Running Man show and controls the network/Dawson). A debate over how far the government works in controlling TV and it's effect on the viewing masses would have been tolerable, even if remotely relevant to the film. This feature far exceeded that scenario and simply portrayed elements of the government as wanting to invade American homes by using backlash from 9/11 as the excuse. I DID NOT buy this DVD to be told how I should think!!! Show me a movie and make me laugh/cry/jump/pump my fist. Don't feed me PROPAGANDA for YOUR cause. I find it humourous that the government is made to be a villian, being in control of the fictional violence-rich TV show, when Mediocre, but strangely likable and memorable 3.,5 stars It's the future, and the world is in a violent, poverty-stricken mess. The biggest entertainment around is . . . a reality show. A very brutal reality show. Convicted criminals become contestants in a game-show where they either get killed as they run a gauntlet against a bunch of thugs, or they survive and get to move to Hawaii. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a man wrongly convicted of a crime and chosen as a contestant in the lovely game-show described above. Of course, Ahnold can't take that lying down, so he proceeds to not only survive, but try to break this ugly set-up. Richard Dawson plays the host of the show, which is broadcast everywhere, and hams up it to perfection, as the ultimate it's-all-about-ratings smarmy egotist-with-a-smile. I didn't like the repetitiveness at times of the action scenes, nor the bad, cheap settings somewhat hidden by bad lighting. I did like the general sense of tension created, as well as Arnold's genuine good-guy versus Dawson's completely-fake bad-guy. Not a movie to rave about, but fun to watch if you don't have much else to do. Buy The Running Man at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on The Running Man Search with the Priority Search Engine on The Running Man This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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