The futuristic thriller “The Running Man” may have starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the film belonged to Richard Dawson.
The former “Family Feud” emcee ruled as the slick-talking game show host, a font of charisma in a sea of dead eyed performances and camp-laden sets.
Schwarzenegger would go on to make better movies, both comedies (“Twins”) and bare-knuckled action flicks (“Terminator 2″). But it’s a shame the film marked the last screen role for Dawson.
Maybe the tiny stretch required to play the host of a brutal game show was all he had in him, but the performance is so note perfect it’s hard not to wish Hollywood had given him another shot.
Schwarzenegger stars as Ben Richards, a man framed for murdering a group of people rioting over the lack of available food. The year is 2017, and a draconian government has taken over. Food rationing is the norm, as are other freedom squashing initiatives.
To please the starving masses, the government stages a game show called “The Running Man” pitting criminals versus “stalkers” who deliver final justice.
The show’s host, an evil charmer named Killian (Dawson), recruits Ben to be the show’s next contestant. Ratings are down, and Ben has fire in his belly. But Killian didn’t expect Ben to give as good as he gets … and often better.
The story, loosely adapted from a novel by Richard (Don’t call me Stephen King) Bachman, delivers the standard bleak peek at our future. So why is everyone wearing shoulder pads and ’80s hairstyles? It’s always fun to watch futuristic movies which can’t predict even basic elements of future technology. Case in point: People still talk on telephones with cords attached to them!
Setting anachronisms aside, “The Running Man” is second-tier Schwarzenegger with some impressive details. Dawson rules as Killian, holding the entire enterprise together until the sporadically clever action sequences commence. The casting at the time was zeitgeist perfect. Dawson ruled the boob tube as the “Family Feud” man, and it didn’t take much tinkering to bring that persona to the big screen.
But it’s hardly a phoned in performance. Killian is smarmy and cruel but a showman to the last, and he knows precisely what it takes to make a show’s ratings spark.
The screenplay delivers a few smart wrinkles, too, like when Ben is given a court appointed talent agent before entering the Running Man arena. And casting Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa as freedom fighters is just plain fun. But “The Running Man” overloads us with patented Schwarzenegger puns whenever he dispatches a bad guy.
The whole bread and circuses genre feels played out in 2010, witness the recent “Death Race” as the latest film hewing close to the cinematic tradition.
A the time, “The Running Man” was just another Schwarzenegger blockbuster. Seen today, it’s a showcase for Dawson’s sly spin on his own persona.
(Photo: Richard Dawson shines as a smarmy game show host giving a contestant (Arnold Schwarzenegger) fits in “The Running Man.”)
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Strangely, the novel by Not Stephen King ended with the hero hijacking a jetliner and flying it into the network’s skyscraper. If they’d gone with that ending the movie would never be replayed again.
Wow, fozzy! I never read the novel, but thanks for that image being that I am reading you on 9/11.
That being said, I liked the movie then and after this review want to see it again.
“I’ll be back.”
“Only in a rerun.”
Yes! that’s the only Ah-nold line that works … and it’s because Dawson rides in to the rescue
I’m just thrilled someone noted how well Dawson robs everyone blind in this movie. It ruined “Family Feud” for me, every time I saw it I wondered if Dawson had the loser family chainsawed by Jim Brown back in the dressing room.