The Running Man

The Running Man is very loosely based on one of Stephen King's short novels, written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. There can hardly be much left of the novel in Paul Martin Glaser's violent action sci-fi, set in the 21st century.

It can be confirmed that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a fairly hopeless actor ten years ago, when the accent was even thicker. Nevertheless he plays an all-American helicopter pilot, Ben Richards, who falls foul of the totalitarian regime because he refuses to fire on an unarmed crowd.

Ben organises a successful prison break, but he is not at large for long, as he is wanted everywhere. Together with his two fellow inmates Laughlin and Weiss, Ben becomes an unwilling participant in popular TV host Damon Killian's sadistic entertainment show 'The Running Man', in which the contestants are convicts and the prize is survival. The three men are joined by another fellow sufferer, the woman Amber, who was to blame for Ben ending up back in captivity but has in the meantime discovered how things really stand. The four are up against professional gladiators, stalkers, who hunt them on live television.

TV truly is the opium of the people, which can be dangerous in our computer age, where image manipulation is so easy. To the viewers' surprise, the victims are not so easy to kill. Ben and Amber survive and are finally picked up by the resistance movement, which helps them reveal the truth about Damon Killian and the mendacious regime.