With Arnold Schwarzenegger currently stumbling through a career resurgence, it's kind of fun to look back at where he got his start, and what better place than RUNNING MAN? It has all the elements of a perfect cult movie: post-apocalyptic trappings, pulpy concept, 80s synth soundtrack, great character actor cast, and a breakneck pacing that ensures that this all makes no sense.
It's funny to see Arnold in "brand building" mode - after making a prison break in Neo-America, his character somehow finds a "World Gym" shirt to wear and smokes a few stogies. There are scenes of him pointlessly showing off that he's muscular despite the fact that he wears sleeveless tees and as audience members, we tend to have eyes. Since this movie, he's also developed into a much better actor, who could deliver campy-ass dialogue with a patina of sincerity that made it work. There's even an "I'll be back" in this.
The actual fights are very campy. Bright neon colors identify the era as much as the pulsing synth soundtrack. I'd say it feels like a weird reaction to American Gladiators, but that came two years after the release of this so actually the inspiration is reversed. So when Richards gets thrown in the arena, riding through metal tubes to arrive on a cart (hey, in HUNGER GAMES it was just a dumb elevator, so I guess +1 for this movie) the threat almost never feels genuine. They introduce the first opponent Subzero (credited as Professor Toru Tanaka, one of a few wrestlers in the movie), and then have him fight in the arena as a hockey player on a small mock-rink. He takes on character and knocks him into a net then rides around on the ice. When your protagonist and antagonist are both are in spandex and fishnet stockings and shit, you have to make them threatening in other ways. The way they carry themselves. The threats they make. The violence we're seen they're capable of.
They seem to want to clash this campy falseness of television with the grim realities of real world violence, but that only happens briefly. Football player Jim Brown (DIRTY DOZEN) plays the third opponent in the ring, a flamethrower dude. We see flashes of him in an office, drinking and hanging out with some coworkers, and up until that point I just assumed he was a dude watching the Running Man show with his rapt coworkers. Then after the first two opponents go down, he gets called to the arena. I thought it was just some insert shots to show all the different types of people watching the game at home, but I guess not. Confusing.
Oh well: the "discovery" plot moment in the movie is when Arnold and his love interest are running around the tunnels of the arena, and discover and old locker room with the old winners in it, and their charred skulls. The love interest explains that viewers were led to believe that the winners get to survive after the games. It's a weird moment, because she should know by now that the entire concept behind the games is a lie, and she lives in the sort of fascist society where people just disappear. However, it works in the sense that it contrasts the sparkly fashions of the arena with the stark reality of real death. Jim Brown doesn't get much time to do his stoic badass thing like in DIRTY DOZEN, sadly. He kind of just goes after Richards and then gets blown up.
Jesse Ventura is set up as the final opponent in the arena, but Richards and him only get a "fake" fight, manufactured through the magic of Photoshop. However, this being a movie, it's all fake anyway (so it's all real), so we get to see Arnold lose a brutal fight to Jesse Ventura. At this point, Ventura hasn't come out as a truther and told all of us sheep about how 9/11 was an inside job so it's kind of fun to watch him in a big cheesy suit, doing his talky thing. He's a pretty great on-screen orator, at least, and he seems to be best benefiting from his wrestling background.
This is the sort of movie where Arnold says shit like "have a light" and "what a hothead" after incinerating a dude to death. It seems like he was miscast in this movie, and they must made him fit, but I know that's not true because no Hollywood producer would ever work in a bankable actor into a property they didn't belong in to get asses in seats, so I guess that's just some dumb fan theory like 9/11 being committed by Middle Eastern terrorists. Thanks, Jesse!!!
This is one of those movies where they just launch you into the high concept buggery with a woman doing a stern voiceover over a primitive text screen telling you to shut the fuck up and welcome to dystopia America. Apparently some sort of super-calamity has befallen the world, and everything is just terrible now. Food shortages, high crime, riots, that sort of stuff. No pandemics as far as I can tell, so there's no scene of Arnold punching out a plague victim or anything. All very ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, just not as effortlessly cool.
Arnold Schwarzenegger (JINGLE ALL THE WAY) plays Richards, a cop in whatever Big Brother Taskforce that was set up to patrol modern day America and keep all of us dumb proles in check. He's flying in a heavily-armed helicopter with a bunch of other Future-Cops wearing brown-tan clothes. I'm not sure if they're trying to do a Nazi thing there, as the society they defend seems to be pretty fascist. Arnold is flying over a crowd rioting over a food shortage (world-building!) and is told by command to blow them all to hell. His immediate reaction is to tell his radio commander that's bullshit, and says he's going home. His commanding officer tells him over the radio that he's to be arrested for insubordination and the dude next to him is now in command, and also definitely kill all those civilians still. Cue Arnold having an awkward struggle with the other three guys over control of the helicopter and losing. Weird to see Arnold lose a fistfight in general.
The first problem this movie has is in it's tension and fight kinetics. For one, the fight choreography is awkward and ambling, and not in an EASTERN PROMISES kind of way that feels true to reality. The best way to introduce us to an action hero is to demonstrate his competency. I know this, because in Verhoeven's TOTAL RECALL, Arnold demonstrates that he's someone to fear through a gunfight in which Arnold bloodily decimates a team of goons. If he ever loses a fight, it's because the other guy cheated or Arnold was betrayed. Having Arnold get beaten and taken captive by a group of normals just feels weird.
Arnold gets stuck in a prison work camp with the underrated Yaphet Kotto (ALIEN, LIVE AND LET DIE) and some pencil-neck. They stage a breakout where they get into a fight as a distraction, then they take out the guards. Arnold watches over the pencil-neck's back while he tries to hack these bomb collars they have around their neck that will go off on command or if they run outside a range. This is a cool concept for this kind of world, and helps establish the sci-fi trappings. In terms of execution though, time is crazy elastic and for some reason numerous fuckups on the nerd's part don't set any of the collars off. In case you were worried you wouldn't get to see a head explode, right before the hacking is done, a prisoner makes a run for it and yeah, awesome 80s exploding head. It's pretty contrived in that we never see the guy as being panicky before then, or hear him talking about needing to get back to his family, or anything. His death isn't treated as some sort of sacrificial lamb to any action, either. I was mostly distracted by the exploding head until I realized it didn't matter even a tiny bit to the story. Then they escape the camp.
We don't get a clear look at the outside society, but things aren't looking good. There's one wide establishing shot of a dark, run down city and a bunch of slums down in the streets. It's a hand-drawn shot, which is charming in a classic way. There's only a few moving objects, but we can already see what's going on with the massive propaganda screens. The world is drab and colorless, except the screen, depicting the Running Man games. It's a series of gladiatorial games wherein prisoners sentenced to death are entered into a to-the-death battle against big, goofy opponents, and hosted by a goofy Richard Dawson. This is all supposed to be theater, and intended to help divorce the populace from the grim realities that they live in.
I can't tell what they think of people and why they would be abated by this game. Are they just being duped into enjoying it? George Carlin used to have jokes about how if we were going to have the death penalty, show it every night for us to watch for our amusement. There's probably someone more scholarly who has brought that up and how we'd all hate the death penalty if they publicized it, but I'd rather reference George. They hand out prizes on this show too, so its got an Oprah thing going for it.
For a movie that nobody talks about anymore, you can see plenty of its influence in modern dystopic/post apoclyptic fiction. The bomb collars remind me of the slaves in the Fallout games, but the better comparison is Battle Royale, seeing as how those movies are about a futuristic dystopia that sets up undesirables in battle arenas against one another.
The first problem this movie has is in it's tension and fight kinetics. For one, the fight choreography is awkward and ambling, and not in an EASTERN PROMISES kind of way that feels true to reality. The best way to introduce us to an action hero is to demonstrate his competency. I know this, because in Verhoeven's TOTAL RECALL, Arnold demonstrates that he's someone to fear through a gunfight in which Arnold bloodily decimates a team of goons. If he ever loses a fight, it's because the other guy cheated or Arnold was betrayed. Having Arnold get beaten and taken captive by a group of normals just feels weird.
Arnold gets stuck in a prison work camp with the underrated Yaphet Kotto (ALIEN, LIVE AND LET DIE) and some pencil-neck. They stage a breakout where they get into a fight as a distraction, then they take out the guards. Arnold watches over the pencil-neck's back while he tries to hack these bomb collars they have around their neck that will go off on command or if they run outside a range. This is a cool concept for this kind of world, and helps establish the sci-fi trappings. In terms of execution though, time is crazy elastic and for some reason numerous fuckups on the nerd's part don't set any of the collars off. In case you were worried you wouldn't get to see a head explode, right before the hacking is done, a prisoner makes a run for it and yeah, awesome 80s exploding head. It's pretty contrived in that we never see the guy as being panicky before then, or hear him talking about needing to get back to his family, or anything. His death isn't treated as some sort of sacrificial lamb to any action, either. I was mostly distracted by the exploding head until I realized it didn't matter even a tiny bit to the story. Then they escape the camp.
We don't get a clear look at the outside society, but things aren't looking good. There's one wide establishing shot of a dark, run down city and a bunch of slums down in the streets. It's a hand-drawn shot, which is charming in a classic way. There's only a few moving objects, but we can already see what's going on with the massive propaganda screens. The world is drab and colorless, except the screen, depicting the Running Man games. It's a series of gladiatorial games wherein prisoners sentenced to death are entered into a to-the-death battle against big, goofy opponents, and hosted by a goofy Richard Dawson. This is all supposed to be theater, and intended to help divorce the populace from the grim realities that they live in. |
For a movie that nobody talks about anymore, you can see plenty of its influence in modern dystopic/post apoclyptic fiction. The bomb collars remind me of the slaves in the Fallout games, but the better comparison is Battle Royale, seeing as how those movies are about a futuristic dystopia that sets up undesirables in battle arenas against one another.
The actual fights are very campy. Bright neon colors identify the era as much as the pulsing synth soundtrack. I'd say it feels like a weird reaction to American Gladiators, but that came two years after the release of this so actually the inspiration is reversed. So when Richards gets thrown in the arena, riding through metal tubes to arrive on a cart (hey, in HUNGER GAMES it was just a dumb elevator, so I guess +1 for this movie) the threat almost never feels genuine. They introduce the first opponent Subzero (credited as Professor Toru Tanaka, one of a few wrestlers in the movie), and then have him fight in the arena as a hockey player on a small mock-rink. He takes on character and knocks him into a net then rides around on the ice. When your protagonist and antagonist are both are in spandex and fishnet stockings and shit, you have to make them threatening in other ways. The way they carry themselves. The threats they make. The violence we're seen they're capable of.
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| I should have guessed by the skunk haircut he'd be a bad guy. |
Oh well: the "discovery" plot moment in the movie is when Arnold and his love interest are running around the tunnels of the arena, and discover and old locker room with the old winners in it, and their charred skulls. The love interest explains that viewers were led to believe that the winners get to survive after the games. It's a weird moment, because she should know by now that the entire concept behind the games is a lie, and she lives in the sort of fascist society where people just disappear. However, it works in the sense that it contrasts the sparkly fashions of the arena with the stark reality of real death. Jim Brown doesn't get much time to do his stoic badass thing like in DIRTY DOZEN, sadly. He kind of just goes after Richards and then gets blown up.
Jesse Ventura is set up as the final opponent in the arena, but Richards and him only get a "fake" fight, manufactured through the magic of Photoshop. However, this being a movie, it's all fake anyway (so it's all real), so we get to see Arnold lose a brutal fight to Jesse Ventura. At this point, Ventura hasn't come out as a truther and told all of us sheep about how 9/11 was an inside job so it's kind of fun to watch him in a big cheesy suit, doing his talky thing. He's a pretty great on-screen orator, at least, and he seems to be best benefiting from his wrestling background.
This is the sort of movie where Arnold says shit like "have a light" and "what a hothead" after incinerating a dude to death. It seems like he was miscast in this movie, and they must made him fit, but I know that's not true because no Hollywood producer would ever work in a bankable actor into a property they didn't belong in to get asses in seats, so I guess that's just some dumb fan theory like 9/11 being committed by Middle Eastern terrorists. Thanks, Jesse!!!
The next big problem is establishing who the hell Richards is. Very likely, were supposed to assume this is "action hero Arnold": a classically brave hero, with a chivalrous respect for women (and an occasional soft spot for kids), implying that this is the first time he's ever been asked to commit violent injustice against a group of unarmed civilians, and he resists. He stresses "unarmed civilians" in his protest. Maybe he's killed rioters and protesters before, but they were armed. If he's leading a team of cops, chances are he's had to put down a few dissidents before. This is left undiscussed in the course of the movie, because "dark pasts" might muddy the waters and make us like him less later on when he's killing guys. This adds an advantage though that almost none of these sort of movies have. At the third or fourth dozen killed nameless baddy in movies like this, I inevitably start thinking that maybe some of these guys aren't so bad. Maybe they got drafted, or maybe they don't know just how much of an asshole their boss is that the hero is hunting them down. Maybe they're just new!
Early in the movie, Arnold literally says to members of the revolution, "I only care about survival," which would strike me as a beginning point for character growth, where the protagonist begins caring about the revolution by the end, because of the love of a woman, or a growing compassion for other people, or just because storytelling is hard. It's definitely the latter. By the end, it turns out the revolution has been hiding out right next to one of the battle arenas, which seems like a terrible place to set up shop. Maybe its like "the safest place to hide is right under their nose" kind of thing, but probably it's more because the writer couldn't find a way to unite the "Richards main plot" with the "revolution subplot" without a long sequence of Richards going on the lam.
It would have made better narrative sense to have Richards get back out into the oppressive world, deal with his new-found fame a bit, and join up with the revolution once he sees the injustice around him. Maybe some of his fans getting beaten up by riot cops or something. Maybe his face is on a poster or some street art. Seeing how green Arnold is in this movie though, I think we're better off without a "heartfelt moment" scene though. I like Sylvester Stallone and his RAMBO reboot/sequel, but the biggest flaw in that movie is having very competently filmed, aggressively graphic scenes of villagers getting massacred by our antagonist army. Some of that is good motivation; too much of it is involvement-breaking. The genocide stuff in that is compelling and creepy, but when it's followed by Sly's emotionless mug having to come to terms with what's happened, it all feels very hollow, unnecessary, and exploitive of both the audience and real life tragedies. A few moments in RUNNING MAN exploring the nature of oppression followed by Arnold being Arnold would have made the scenes before invalidated, or at least weakened. We all skirted a "crying Arnold" plot moment there, so let's just take a breath and move forward.
Early in the movie, Arnold literally says to members of the revolution, "I only care about survival," which would strike me as a beginning point for character growth, where the protagonist begins caring about the revolution by the end, because of the love of a woman, or a growing compassion for other people, or just because storytelling is hard. It's definitely the latter. By the end, it turns out the revolution has been hiding out right next to one of the battle arenas, which seems like a terrible place to set up shop. Maybe its like "the safest place to hide is right under their nose" kind of thing, but probably it's more because the writer couldn't find a way to unite the "Richards main plot" with the "revolution subplot" without a long sequence of Richards going on the lam.
It would have made better narrative sense to have Richards get back out into the oppressive world, deal with his new-found fame a bit, and join up with the revolution once he sees the injustice around him. Maybe some of his fans getting beaten up by riot cops or something. Maybe his face is on a poster or some street art. Seeing how green Arnold is in this movie though, I think we're better off without a "heartfelt moment" scene though. I like Sylvester Stallone and his RAMBO reboot/sequel, but the biggest flaw in that movie is having very competently filmed, aggressively graphic scenes of villagers getting massacred by our antagonist army. Some of that is good motivation; too much of it is involvement-breaking. The genocide stuff in that is compelling and creepy, but when it's followed by Sly's emotionless mug having to come to terms with what's happened, it all feels very hollow, unnecessary, and exploitive of both the audience and real life tragedies. A few moments in RUNNING MAN exploring the nature of oppression followed by Arnold being Arnold would have made the scenes before invalidated, or at least weakened. We all skirted a "crying Arnold" plot moment there, so let's just take a breath and move forward.
There's a scene where Arnold gets blamed for the massacre (that he actually tried to stop) through selective editing, but its not from a cockpit cam of him selectively cut together, or a (would have been clever for the time) reeenactment - it's just the cinematic shots from the movie cut together selectively, implying that the editing team behind the fictional tv show The Running Man somehow has access to the movie THE RUNNING MAN on laserdisc. If so, Richard Dawson should probably fast forward to the part where he gets murdered and try to avoid that later on.
The movie is pretty skeptical of tv, which is disingenuous considering film is just as susceptible to crass manipulation as tv, but old moral outrage always does seem silly in hindsight. Probably the worst form of anti-violent protest is a hyper-violent movie that doth protest too much. It's way too easy to slip into double-standard territory. I'm not saying don't explore violence, just don't condemn it and make it fun and campy at the same time. I've got problems with FUNNY GAMES, but the way Haneke treats violence as anything but salacious puts him on better ground than a movie about our pure-hearted hero Arnold just fucking mauling dudes with a big dumb grin, after being introduced by disco dancers. I think it wants to be satire, but it's not.
There's a turning point for the audience at home when an elderly lady says she hopes that Arnold wins. "He's one mean motherfucker!" she says, and we see people start putting money behind him. That's not really refuting that this contest is wrong though, it just means that people have happened to pick a pony that's anti-government, but is kicking ass at the contest in ways never seen before. That's not like the HUNGER GAMES where the unwilling contestants get prizes for being the crowd-favorite and we see a revolution brewing at seeing how much this is all bullshit. He's still an object to be used, and the people at home still don't seem to understand the inherit injustice in this all, which is the true victory he could gain. There's no real redemption for the throngs of people who lustily watched the game, drinking it up every week. The problem is the whole game, not just this one match.
If Arnold is one of "the good guys" and knows right from wrong, then why doesn't anyone else seem to call bullshit on this stuff? At the end, everyone sees one tape that changes their mind and makes them see that the Running Man show might have tricked its audience, but if they had half a conscience before wouldn't they have seen that the government constantly cracking down on dissent and such is a bad thing? The movie takes place in 2017. RUNNING MAN was released in 1987. There's what must be an 80 year old woman in this, who is all giddy about Arnold's demise, then grows to like him as a fighter, then realizes it was all bullshit - that's a reaction from a child that's grown up in the system, not an old lady that was a fully developed adult when all the changes start up. Maybe the apocalypse was pretty rough on old ladies. The revolution seems full of young kids, so I guess the brainwashing tv propaganda worked inversely and the young and susceptible smell the bullshit and the old people don't. Maybe it's like how in 1984 and how they let young prole kids buy porno and they get off on the minor rebellion of thinking it's illegal, even though its not. Or maybe the young kids here are all those jackass snobs who say they "don't watch tv." Welcome to the future!
There's a weird character conflict at the end of the movie with an earlier scene. The second opponent is a big fat electric dude wearing Christmas lights (Arnold makes fun of him by dissing his costume, which the definition of a contrived joke) and singing opera. Arnold has a scene where the guy's car has flipped over and he's making these pathetic little pig noises and Arnold says he's not going to kill an unarmed man. This is strange considering Arnold does just that at the end of the movie to Richard Dawson, and we're definitely supposed to think that's awesome. Dawson basically offers him a deal and sort of surrenders, and Arnold chucks him into one of the metal carts to go down into the arena. I don't know if they ran out of money to have Dawson enter a man-to-man struggle with Arnold (which would have been somewhat poetic if Dawson had some weapon to level the field), but instead his cart just blows up despite all evidence that these carts arrive safely 100% of the time. Maybe I missed Arnold ripping off the parachute. In any other movie, this would be a sad ending, where Arnold is just as bad as the game. But no - the crowd cheers for him while he grins, and he grabs the girl by the hip and frenches her.
A lot of the messaging in the movie is well-meaning but braindead, but I think this movie ages best as an oddball icon of a specific era of film in the 80s. It definitely suffers from having Arnold in the lead, because the entire film has to conceptually bend over backwards to satisfy that. A scrappy but smaller actor (a Snake Plisskin type) with more brains than raw muscle would have made a more compelling lead, and maybe some of that censorship stuff might have sunk in more. I can't really recommend it as a cult classic though, because THEY LIVE came out a year later, and better used a stilted muscle-headed performer in Rowdy "Roddy" Piper with stronger messaging and tighter action.
Arnold developed into a much more assured actor once he (and his producing buddies) realized his range and took advantage of it. Roles like in the THE TERMINATOR series are so indelibly linked to him that it's hard to imagine the casting process even happened. I base this theory on 0 pieces of evidence (equal to or greater than the amount of evidence Jesse Ventura used to tell us 9/11 was an inside job) but maybe Eric Stoltz was cast first and then recast later, like in BACK TO THE FUTURE? Arnold's stiff, robotic reading in this movie feels strangely inhuman. In THE TERMINATOR, it felt perfect, and by the time T2: JUDGMENT DAY rolled along, he had certainly figured out where his charm laid, and let him manipulate the role for laughs or for aww-yeah badass moments. It's cynical and dumb to just shuck Arnold off as a "dumb, bad actor." The guy is just limited, and we got to see his limits breaking very publicly because of how many of his movies are considered classics now. Every character actor has their limits, and Arnold needed roles like this (and better directors) to figure out where the hell his career should go next.
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There's a weird character conflict at the end of the movie with an earlier scene. The second opponent is a big fat electric dude wearing Christmas lights (Arnold makes fun of him by dissing his costume, which the definition of a contrived joke) and singing opera. Arnold has a scene where the guy's car has flipped over and he's making these pathetic little pig noises and Arnold says he's not going to kill an unarmed man. This is strange considering Arnold does just that at the end of the movie to Richard Dawson, and we're definitely supposed to think that's awesome. Dawson basically offers him a deal and sort of surrenders, and Arnold chucks him into one of the metal carts to go down into the arena. I don't know if they ran out of money to have Dawson enter a man-to-man struggle with Arnold (which would have been somewhat poetic if Dawson had some weapon to level the field), but instead his cart just blows up despite all evidence that these carts arrive safely 100% of the time. Maybe I missed Arnold ripping off the parachute. In any other movie, this would be a sad ending, where Arnold is just as bad as the game. But no - the crowd cheers for him while he grins, and he grabs the girl by the hip and frenches her.
A lot of the messaging in the movie is well-meaning but braindead, but I think this movie ages best as an oddball icon of a specific era of film in the 80s. It definitely suffers from having Arnold in the lead, because the entire film has to conceptually bend over backwards to satisfy that. A scrappy but smaller actor (a Snake Plisskin type) with more brains than raw muscle would have made a more compelling lead, and maybe some of that censorship stuff might have sunk in more. I can't really recommend it as a cult classic though, because THEY LIVE came out a year later, and better used a stilted muscle-headed performer in Rowdy "Roddy" Piper with stronger messaging and tighter action.
Arnold developed into a much more assured actor once he (and his producing buddies) realized his range and took advantage of it. Roles like in the THE TERMINATOR series are so indelibly linked to him that it's hard to imagine the casting process even happened. I base this theory on 0 pieces of evidence (equal to or greater than the amount of evidence Jesse Ventura used to tell us 9/11 was an inside job) but maybe Eric Stoltz was cast first and then recast later, like in BACK TO THE FUTURE? Arnold's stiff, robotic reading in this movie feels strangely inhuman. In THE TERMINATOR, it felt perfect, and by the time T2: JUDGMENT DAY rolled along, he had certainly figured out where his charm laid, and let him manipulate the role for laughs or for aww-yeah badass moments. It's cynical and dumb to just shuck Arnold off as a "dumb, bad actor." The guy is just limited, and we got to see his limits breaking very publicly because of how many of his movies are considered classics now. Every character actor has their limits, and Arnold needed roles like this (and better directors) to figure out where the hell his career should go next.
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