The angriest man alive

It's possible that there is no literary trope I hate more than the "throbbing forehead vein" trope. I've probably read thirty books – maybe fifty books – in my lifetime where someone described an angry person as possessing a vein in their forehead: throbbing, pulsing, bulging, "standing out." Maybe I'm an anomaly, or maybe I'm just unobservant, but I've known plenty of angry people in my lifetime – furious people, bitter people, spiteful people – and I've never once noticed any of them to have a prominent forehead vein, regardless of whether they were angry.

In Edgar Wright's re-adaptation of Stephen Kings' The Running Man, Glen Powell plays protagonist Ben Richards, a man comprised of a bottomless well of rage. Very quickly in the movie, it becomes clear that Richards' most valuable asset, as well as his greatest weakness in his dystopian reality, is his bone-deep rage – rage at injustice and inequality in the world, rage at class warfare, rage at authority, rage at society, and rage at the unfair hand that life has dealt to him and his family, specifically. Shortly after this character point is established, I noticed that Powell has The Vein. I was taken aback for a number of minutes, until it began to dawn on me that The Vein was actually a bit of prosthetic makeup, or perhaps even CG. I had been shocked for a while that The Vein actually existed on a human being, and then I was offended that Wright and Powell made the choice to try to make The Vein their version of Paul Giamatti's eye in The Holdovers.

That was the first bone to pick with the 2025 The Running Man. My second bone to pick is Powell's teeth. When my friend and I saw the first Running Man trailer in theaters, he leaned over to me at the end of it and said something to the effect of, "Those aren't slum teeth." Meaning that in a dystopian society, a man who is identified as being from the Slum portion of the populace would NOT have teeth like that.

Maybe if my friend had never made that aside to me, I wouldn't have noticed, but as the movie unfolded, it was impossible for me to NOT notice it. Glen Powell's teeth are perfect. They're immaculate. They beam out from his tanned face like polished ivory. And they're especially notable and difficult to ignore in The Running Man, where Powell probably spends at least 40% of the film with his face caked in grime, grease, sweat, blood, or some combination of all of them. Yet any time he speaks or yells – which is often – none of that filth has made its way onto his pristine chompers. Even more egregious: this is a movie where Powell's character actually uses fake teeth while donning disguises! So it's not like they never considered doing something with the actor's teeth. They have washes for teeth. It's possible to tone down the Cloud Dancer of it all at just a tiny bit.

All of the above being said ... Wright absolutely crushed this version of The Running Man. The original Arnold Schwarzenegger version from 1987 (which King has never been a fan of) is a beloved action movie classic, an icon of 1980s over-the-top, cartoonish bombast. It's goofy and silly and packed with one-liners and oiled biceps and leotards. The villains in the movie are Bond villains crossed with pro wrestlers (both things literally in some cases), and Schwarzenegger progresses through them like levels in a video game ... or like he does in Commando or Predator or several other of his films.

The new version of The Running Man is mostly an excuse for Edgar Wright to create a jam-packed, relentless action movie that is completely production designed out the ass. The opening title sequence, where Powell walks from the slums through the intake zone and into the Rich area of the world, where the network building that broadcasts The Running Man game show stands, absolutely knocked my socks off. And that's before Wright even gets to really play in the rest of the world that he created, which includes a bevy of fake television shows, commercials, and other ephemera, as well as introducing us to Colman Domingo, who plays the host of The Running Man (ably following in the shoes of the perfectly-cast Richard Dawson from the 1987 version). All of it is tremendous fun, and very nearly all of it works as intended. The Running Man operates at a clip that makes it nearly impervious to having holes poked in it, which is probably necessary. Wright's The Running Man is more serious than the 1987 version, but at the end of the day, it's probably just about what a 2025 version of The Running Man can get away with without it being disregarded entirely.

I liked it a whole bunch, and it's one hell of an action movie, start to finish. Bonus points for having the trio of contestants be Powell, Love Lies Bleeding's Katy O'Brian, and Please Don't Destroy's Martin Herlihy. Perfect trifecta, no notes.

The Running Man probably already classifies as a flop. It's not as tremendous a movie as Baby Driver (although it benefits from not including Kevin Spacey), but it is a lovely return to form of sorts for Wright, who lost quite a bit of his luster with One Night In Soho (which I think I liked better than almost anyone else). Wright is having a ton of fun, as is Powell. If nothing else, it's nice to watch an honest-to-god craftsman being given a $100 million budget for a frivolous action romp, and seeing him put every last dollar of that budget on the screen.