Tag Archives: stephen-king

The Running Man (2025)

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Edgar Wright’s new adaptation of the Stephen King book came out this weekend. It should be mentioned to everyone that this is not a reboot or remake of the movie from 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Dawson, but a closer adaptation of the novel, because if you go into the new The Running Man film thinking it is going to be like that, you might be disappointed.

Ben Richards (Glen Powell) has lost his job and his young daughter is extremely sick. In order to try and get enough money for his family to get her needed health care, Richards applied for some of the game shows on the network. The game shows were violent and dangerous, but could help provide enough money to save his daughter.

However, Ben’s anger over his situation shone through the audition process and led the network head, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), to offer Ben a spot as one of the three runners on the final hunt for the game show The Running Man. A group of Hunters would try to find the runners and kill them, but if they could survive for 30 days, the runner could win a billion dollars.

Of course, the network and Killian were not going to play fair and were as corrupt as you would expect, and things turned badly for Ben.

The best part of the movie was Glen Powell. He showed himself as a capable and engaging action star. He showed how much of a good man he was at first, despite his internal anger, and the contest showed how those morals could be warped. Brolin was tremendous in lesser amount of screen time. You could quite figuratively feel the slime coming off of this character.

The action was really well done and thrilling. Powell is easy to root for and his efforts to survive got tougher with each moment.

The film did feel like it was too long. Some of the middle part of the film could have been trimmed down. I would say that they could have dropped around 15-20 minutes of run time and made this feel more streamlined. I also am not sure if the third act was as good as it could have been, because the first part of the movie absolutely rocked.

I feel like this was very entertaining, but I think it does not quite reach the level of epic. It absolutely could have been more than it was, but I do think that it was an exciting action film at the very least.

3.7 stars

IT: Welcome to Derry S1 E

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Spoilers

“Now You See It”

Episode three of the new IT series on HBO Max is a banger.

We get some more psychic “shining” from Dick Hallorann, who we know ages up to work at the Outlook Hotel (and get an axe in his chest from Jack). The scene of him in the helicopter, flying over Derry and having psychic images of Pennywise in his forms, was exciting. Admittedly, as he was opening the cargo door of the copter, I never thought he’d fall out or die from that because I knew he had to be a part of the Shining eventually. Still, it was a tense moment.

Shawshank was mentioned too, which is part of the Stephen King shared universe. I do love how there are Easter eggs from other films in Derry. I’m sure there are some other hints out there that I do not recognize.

Ronnie’s father has something he is not telling anyone. It feels as if it is something that could work as an alibi, but he does not want to let that info out. Curious.

The flashback to the 1908 incident with Pennywise was scary. Frank and Rose’s interactions with the creature in the woods, a lookalike for the slender man from the carnival, was intense. Frank running from the creature only to be saved by Rose, wielding the slingshot that Frank had given to her (and Frank’s father had given to him). It was an exciting cold open showing what this episode would bring.

It was not as intense as when Ronnie, Lilly, Will, and Rich went into a graveyard to try and summon the monster that had attacked our departed friends from episode one in order to get pictures of it. I am not sure they could have come up with a more dangerous plan if they had tried. They were really fortunate to escape that event with their lives.

We end the episode with a pic of Pennywise as Will said of the photo he took, “It’s… a clown.”

The Long Walk

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I am all stiff and tired after driving for 100 miles. I can’t imagine having to walk it.

A ensemble of characters have to do just that (and more) in the latest film based on a Stephen King novella called The Long Walk, and it is absolutely tremendous.

My first feeling was that this was a combination of Squid Game and Hunger Games, which made sense considering Francis Lawrence directed it and he had directed several of the Hunger Games movies.

In this dystopian future, a group of young men volunteers win a lottery drawing for the right to participate in the “Long Walk,” an annual event where the group start to walk and must continue to walk at a brisque speed or else they would be eliminated. The last man standing would be declared the winner and would earn a wish and prize money.

I tell you, The Long Walk is one of the most difficult, heart-wrenching, hard-to-watch movies of the year. It keeps you, as an audience member, off balance and uneasy, if not outrightly disturbed. There were some scenes in this movie that were totally unsettling, and I do not just mean the scene of the execution of the walkers.

I was extremely emotional during this movie because they did such an amazing job of setting up and developing the characters that I cared for them in a limited amount of time and I found myself tearing up on more than one occasion and felt gut-punched more than once.

The film really was a character piece, as the driving force of much of the movie was the dialogue that was going on between the actors. It was so expertly written that there were characters who only received minimal attention that I cared about so much. The interaction between these actors drove the story and only helped serve the shocking violence that would follow. Nothing was held back. The violence was brutal, crushing and significant.

Our main two fixtures among the characters were Raymond Garraty and Peter McVries, played brilliantly by Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson, respectfully. The performances of these two actors really created a bond between the characters that carried you through a film where you knew that only one of the ensemble would survive. They became brothers-like and gave the film real heart.

Mark Hamill played the Major, the head of this activity who would show up throughout the Long Walk to be an a-hole and continue to harass and remind the walkers of what was going on. Mark Hamill is awesome as a villain, but to be fair, this Major is not the most developed character in the film as he was a bit too mustache-twirly. Hamill played him extremely well though as I had sufficient feeling of resentment toward him as the film progressed.

This is not a fun watch by any means. It gives us a depressing world with an even worse premise that will lead only to violent death and loss. As an allegory to the Vietnam War, which is was back in the 1960s when Stephen King wrote this novella, it works well. As a character piece, introducing us to these sad people through dialogue and death, it works even more. The Long Walk is a powerfully compelling, hard to watch film that gave me a lot of feelings and things to think about.

4.6 stars