'The Running Man' review: Remake with Glen Powell falls flat on its face

The time seems right to readapt Stephen King’s 1982 novel "The Running Man," about a dystopian society in which desperate citizens enter a deadly game show for cash. For starters, King’s story was set in 2025. The movie allows Glen Powell, Hollywood’s most ambitious star, to shoulder the mantle of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who led the first film in 1987. And it’s a chance for the director Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead") to refashion one of the hokiest films of the ’80s into something fresh and fun.

Alas, "The Running Man" is neither of those. Astoundingly, it’s worse than the original, a possibility I never considered. That movie, directed by Paul Michael Glaser, at least had camp appeal in its cheesy costumes, chintzy sets and the game show host Richard Dawson playing a sleazy version of himself. This version, written by Wright with Michael Bacall, is just boring — an action-thriller that shuns originality and operates on default mode at every turn.

Here’s a dystopia you’ve visited before: gray skies, Brutalist buildings, dully dressed citizens, all overseen by The Network, which churns out jingoistic entertainment for the masses. Powell plays Ben Richards, an unemployed laborer with a wife (Jayme Lawson) and a sick daughter. To pay his bills, he enters "The Running Man," a game show with a simple goal: Stay alive for 30 days and earn $1 billion. But there's a wrinkle: The show’s flashy host, Bobby T (Colman Domingo), paints Ben as a depraved criminal, so now all of America wants to hunt and kill him.

Fortunately, Richards gets help from a couple of revolutionaries: The Apostle (Daniel Ezra), who posts online content analyzing the game show, and Elton (Michael Cera), a prepper-nerd who publishes a ‘zine called "The Truth" (yep, that’s the title). These guys haven’t dug up any secrets about The Network; they’re just really astute media critics. (That job is as glamorous as ever, I see.)

Wright, usually so full of energy and ideas — see his slapstick stunt work in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" or his sudden narrative U-turn in "The World’s End" — here just punts. Powell’s Richards dives into elevators and out of windows, scales buildings and blows stuff up, but none of it feels new or surprising. The film does borrow one good idea from the original: Have Richards kidnap a pampered citizen (Emilia Jones), who initially loathes him but grows to trust him. She appears about 20 minutes before the end credits roll.

In the 1987 film, there’s a villain who sings opera and shoots electricity at people. That guy was preposterous but at least memorable; Lee Pace, here playing an assassin with a big sock on his head, is no replacement. Come back, Arnold, all is forgiven!

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com