Tuesday new releases: 18 November 2025

The Running Man, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t and Spinal Tap II: The End Continues are in cinemas.

Last weekend was evidently the weekend that movies decided they were going to try and entertain us. Three high profile releases — two sequels and one remake — with nothing more on their mind than taking our minds off the state of the world.

But wait, I hear you cry. Isn’t The Running Man a dystopian satire of modern society and our collapse into becoming mindless consumers of titilating but irrelevant reality TV? Doesn’t it purport to be a pungent critique of the capitalism’s seemingly inevitable consolidation of monopoly rule, dehumanisation of the masses and oligarchic excess?

Well, no. Maybe in 1987 (when the first big screen adaptation came out) or 1982 (when Richard Bachman/Stephen King’s novel was published) this might have been seen as some kind of warning but in 2025 Edgar Wright’s new version contains so little insight, has so little to say, that its purpose is simply to be as nostalgic for the 80s as the Spinal Tap movie is.

Glen Powell is Ben Richards, a worker without a job. Blacklisted from all the enterprises owned by “The Network” due to his attempts at organising his colleagues into a union, he is unable provide for his family and is further humiliated by the fact that his wife (Jayme Lawson) is a hostess at a gentlemen’s club and that it is her tips that pay for the medicine their two-year-old needs.

Intending to audition for a minor — although just as demeaning — game show for a few New Dollars, Richards’ talent for insubordination catches the eye of executive producer Josh Brolin and he is instead forced to become a contestant in the Network’s flagship show, The Running Man. Three contestants have thirty days to survive being hunted by a group of trained killers while the public at large — desperate for blood and reward money — attempt to spot them and dob them in.¹

Richards’ bloody mindedness sees him survive the first week and even make some unlikely allies, but as he gets closer to the 30-day victory line he becomes aware that the dice are loaded, the deck is stacked and the house always wins. Or does it?

Wright was famous for his light touch when he was working with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost on the Cornetto Trilogy but without them his eye for material isn’t so sure. The Running Man is full of easter egg references to King characters and stories, as well as other 80s action movies and I suspect that if half as much effort had gone in to the rest of the script than we might have had a film that moved us a little bit.