Stephen King Month: The Running Man

4.5 Stars - Awesome

For a fairly sizeable chunk of his career Stephen King wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, producing four novels before people figured it out and in recent years he has published a fifth which he discovered. This is the first film of the two based on any of the Bachman books, The Running Man.

The Running Man tells the story of Ben Richards who, to support his family, volunteers to be on the most successful show on television, The Running Man; where a man must evade capture by the police and special hunters for as long as possible, for every hour they survive they get an extra hundred dollars, for every hunter or policeman they kill they get another hundred dollars and every day they must send in a video tape of themselves. If they survive for thirty days they win a million dollars; no-one has survived more than eight. Now Richards is trapped in a deadly game he can't win, with time running out and everyone out to get him, he decides to take down the games even if he has to sacrifice himself to do it.

The film however is nothing like the book, as it is an Arnold Schwazenegger action film, with all the goofy fun you'd expect from it. The action is great, the satire of T.V. is fun and he gets to walk off into the sunset with a hot chick at the end. Oh and I counted a total of sixteen Arnold one-liners my favourite being, upon cutting a man in half and being asked where he is Arnold replies "oh, he had to split".

This is a dreadful adaptation of the book, taking only the name, main character name and some basic premise from the book. But I honestly don't care, sure the book is great, but the film does its own thing that is a lot of fun in the same way Total Recall is nothing like We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.

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In short, watch this, it rules, also read the book, because that also rules.