The Running Man

Details

The year is 2019 and the American economy has collapsed. The country has become a totalitarian police state, with the government controlling the media and using heavily censored television programming to keep the population entertained and, more importantly, under control.

One of the most popular programmes on television is The Running Man, a game show in which convicted criminals are offered the opportunity to win a full pardon. Unfortunately, earning that pardon isn't quite as simple as answering a few questions or guessing the value of a playing card.

Contestants are sent into a specially constructed game zone where they must run for their lives whilst being pursued by a collection of heavily armed professional killers known as Stalkers. Each has their own weapon and suitably ridiculous television persona, whilst a cheering studio audience watches the carnage unfold under the direction of the show's charismatic host, Damon Killian.

Ben Richards is a police helicopter pilot who finds himself on the wrong side of the government after refusing an order to fire upon an unarmed crowd during a food riot. His fellow officers carry out the attack anyway and Richards is subsequently framed for the massacre, earning himself the nickname "The Butcher of Bakersfield" and a lengthy stay in a labour camp.

Richards eventually escapes alongside resistance members Laughlin and Weiss, but his freedom doesn't last long. After attempting to force television composer Amber Mendez to help him leave the country, Richards is recaptured and attracts the attention of Killian, who thinks the notorious Butcher of Bakersfield would make an ideal contestant for The Running Man.

Richards initially refuses, but Killian threatens to put Laughlin and Weiss into the game instead. Naturally, Killian has no intention of honouring his side of the agreement and all three men soon find themselves being launched into the game zone.

Unfortunately for the Stalkers, nobody appears to have considered the possibility that Richards might be rather better at killing than the show's usual collection of unfortunate contestants. As Subzero, Buzzsaw, Dynamo and Fireball discover, this particular Running Man isn't interested in simply running away.

Meanwhile, Amber begins to suspect that Richards may have been telling the truth about Bakersfield. With the government manipulating television footage to create whatever version of events it requires, exposing what really happened could prove considerably more dangerous than the game itself.

Picture & Sound

The picture can only be rated as average, with a transfer full of imperfections, noise and dust scratches. At times it's almost as though the film has been sourced from an old video rental tape rather than a decent film master.

Colour reproduction is reasonable enough and there are no particularly serious signs of artifacting or outlining, but the image frequently lacks the clarity and detail you'd expect from DVD. Darker sequences are particularly disappointing, with noise and print damage becoming increasingly obvious.

Given the popularity of both the film and Arnold Schwarzenegger, you'd have thought somebody might have made an effort to clean the source material before transferring it to DVD. Unfortunately, there isn't much evidence of that here.

The film's colourful television studio and ridiculous Stalker costumes should really provide an opportunity for the format to shine, but instead everything has a slightly tired appearance. It's watchable, certainly, but hardly the sort of transfer that's going to persuade anybody that DVD represents the future of home cinema.

If you thought the picture was disappointing, you're certainly not going to get excited about the stereo soundtrack. For an action film it's truly criminal, with virtually no sense of depth or direction and little opportunity for a decent home cinema system to get involved.

Gunfire, explosions and the various confrontations with the Stalkers all remain firmly anchored across the front soundstage. There's no surround activity to speak of and very little weight to the larger action sequences, leaving scenes that should have considerable impact sounding disappointingly flat.

Even Harold Faltermeyer's unmistakably eighties soundtrack sounds rather lifeless. Admittedly, the synthesiser-heavy score is hardly going to convince anybody that the film was made yesterday, but a decent audio transfer could at least have given it some additional presence.

Overall, the soundtrack is probably the weakest part of an already disappointing presentation. For an action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, that's practically unforgivable.

Menu & Extras

With a poor picture and soundtrack there isn't much hope for the menus or extras, and unfortunately the disc doesn't contain any surprises.

The menu is a static and silent affair featuring little more than a picture of a scowling Arnie in a spandex tracksuit. It's functional, but that's about the nicest thing you can say about it. Given the film's colourful television-show presentation, there's plenty of material that could have been used to produce something considerably more imaginative.

The only extra available is the standard theatrical trailer and, unsurprisingly, its picture quality is also on the poor side.

That's it. No commentary, no interviews, no retrospective material and nothing looking at Schwarzenegger, director Paul Michael Glaser or the film's rather interesting vision of television and society. Even a basic making-of featurette would have been welcome.

Considering how much fun could have been had producing a DVD around the film's game-show format, this is a remarkably lazy package.

Overall

Although the music, hairstyles and various items of clothing make The Running Man look incredibly dated, none of that prevents it from being something of an eighties action classic.

In fact, some of the dated material arguably makes it even more entertaining. The enormous costumes, spandex, synthesiser soundtrack and gloriously over-the-top Stalkers couldn't have come from any decade other than the eighties. Trying to modernise any of it would probably destroy half the fun.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is in familiar territory as Ben Richards. He's huge, thoroughly cheesed off, practically indestructible and supplied with enough one-liners to keep him occupied whenever he's not throwing somebody through a wall.

By 1987 Arnie was already well on his way to becoming one of Hollywood's biggest action stars thanks to films such as The Terminator, Commando and Predator, and The Running Man is another important entry from that period. It's difficult to imagine anybody else delivering some of the dialogue with quite the same combination of menace and complete absurdity.

And there are some absolute crackers. Practically every defeated Stalker receives an appropriate Schwarzenegger send-off, with Richards apparently having an amusing remark prepared regardless of whether somebody has been electrocuted, cut in half or incinerated.

The supporting villains are equally important. Subzero has his razor-sharp hockey stick, Buzzsaw has his chainsaw, Fireball has a flamethrower and Dynamo appears to have escaped from some sort of electrically powered opera company. Subtle they aren't.

Jesse Ventura's Captain Freedom is possibly even better because he eventually refuses to participate in the increasingly manipulated show. Seeing two former bodybuilding champions and future American governors sharing the screen is amusing enough in retrospect, although Schwarzenegger and Ventura obviously had rather different political destinations ahead of them.

However, it's Richard Dawson who almost steals the film from Arnie. Casting the former Family Feud host as Damon Killian was inspired. He's charming and cheerful whenever the cameras are running, but the instant they stop he's revealed as a thoroughly unpleasant and manipulative television executive.

Killian understands that the truth is completely irrelevant provided the audience believes what they're seeing. Footage can be edited, identities can be changed and inconvenient facts can simply disappear. The government doesn't need to convince everybody individually when it controls what everybody watches.

That's where The Running Man is considerably smarter than its collection of exploding Stalkers might initially suggest. Strip away Arnie's one-liners and the ridiculous costumes and there's a fairly cynical satire about television, government propaganda and an audience increasingly entertained by the suffering of other people.

Some of that seems rather less ridiculous now than it probably did in 1987. Reality television is becoming increasingly popular and whilst we're thankfully still some distance away from watching convicted criminals being chased around abandoned industrial areas by men carrying chainsaws, you do occasionally wonder exactly where the boundaries are going to end up.

Of course, none of this stops the film from being wonderfully silly. The plot requires enormous suspension of disbelief, the Stalkers are essentially computer-game bosses waiting for Arnie to defeat them one at a time and the final confrontation goes exactly where you'd expect it to.

But that's precisely why it works. The Running Man never forgets that it's supposed to be entertaining. It's violent, colourful, fast-moving and packed with ridiculous characters and even more ridiculous dialogue.

Unfortunately, the same enthusiasm clearly wasn't applied to this DVD.

The picture is mediocre, the stereo soundtrack is desperately disappointing and the supplementary package consists of one rather tired-looking trailer. For a film that should be perfect demonstration material for a decent home cinema setup, that's a wasted opportunity.

So the recommendation is a difficult one. The film itself is an easy recommendation, particularly for Schwarzenegger fans and anyone with a soft spot for eighties action movies. This particular DVD isn't.

If you can put aside the poor picture and sound there's still a classic Arnie movie underneath. Unfortunately, this release does very little to help you enjoy it.

Great film. Rubbish DVD. I'll be back when somebody releases a decent version.

Special features

• Theatrical Trailer