The Running Man (DVD)

2008 was the year that I decided to start my girlfriend's education. For too many years she had gone along unaware of the true masters of cinema. During our time together she has refused to watch any film made during the 80s believing it to be a time of poor taste and bad cinema. Even worse she has refused to watch any films starring movie Gods such as Stallone, Van Damme or Willis. No longer will this happen as the BBC's freeview service means that these masters dominate the airwaves. Barely a night goes by without an action classic on ITV4 or Virgin1. Therefore, when I saw that 'The Running Man' was being shown on TV one night I glued her to the sofa and aimed ...  Read the complete review

THE RUNNING MAN Stephen King, you could presume, has a certain degree of foresight. Whilst not exactly identical to his novel The Running Man (written under his pseudonym Richard Bachman and published in 1982), the likes of Big Brother, Shipwrecked and any other hopeless reality television programme you care to mention certainly conforms to his future society where the masses lap up reality game shows. Yet the game shows in King's world are often deadly to the contestants despite the big money prizes on offer, making it all the more intriguing for the bloodthirsty audiences of the future to enjoy. Imagine being treated to the likes of watching some nobody ...  Read the complete review

note: also appears in part on Flixster and The Student Room The Running Man is one of the many great Arnold Schwarzenegger films released in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. It features him as he became self-aware of the legacy he was creating and embraced it fully, exaggerating those hilarious one liners and just generally being as badass as possible. The film takes place in 2017, where America is in tatters and run like a police state, with a dystopia government in place that murders any dissenters. The film is a satire of the media culture where there are no holds barred in the quest for ratings, and opens as a helicopter pilot named Ben ...  Read the complete review

'The Running Man' is somewhat of an oddity. Based on the novel by Richard Bachman; which in fact is a pseudonym for popular horror writer Stephen King, it explores the potential power and misuse of the media. On the other hand, it's a spectacularly eighties action vehicle for one of the great icons of the genre: Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger. 'The Running Man' is one of the more overlooked gems from Arnie's eighties exploits, being overshadowed by much bigger films like 'The Terminator', 'Commando' and 'Predator' to name a few, which is a shame because its probably the most interesting of the bunch. It is the year 2017 and a totalitarian government uses the media; ...  Read the complete review

Director: Paul Michael Glaser Producers: George Linder and Tim Zinnemann Writer: Steven E. de Souza Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richards Dawson, Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, Jim Brown, Jesse Ventura, Sven-ole Thorsen, Erland Van Lidth, Marvin J. McIntyre, Mick Fleetwood, Gus Rethwisch. This movie was released in late 1987 and followed the survival of contestants of a futuristic television program, very loosely based on the 1982 novel of the same name by Stephen King. **BRIEF PLOT** It's the year 2017 and the world is in ruin. The economy has collapsed and people are controlled by a police state, there ...  Read the complete review