A man desperate for money to pay for his sick daughter’s healthcare agrees to be a contestant in a deadly TV game show in present day, dystopian America, where he must avoid being spotted by drones and killed by bounty hunters for 30 days in order to win the billion-dollar prize. Glen Powell, Josh Brolin and Colman Domingo star in this remake of the 1987 action-adventure/sci-fi film that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Working from a screenplay more faithful to the Stephen King source material than the prior film, co-writer/director Edgar Wright (Last Night in Soho, Baby Driver, Shaun of the Dead) cleverly captures the nation’s current bleak political mood in this satirical, conspiracy theory-filled story in which a bloodthirsty public, when not lulled to distraction by the billionaire-owned network’s mean-spirited “The Housewives of…” type reality programming, has been manipulated into believing that the show’s villainous assassins are the heroes and the contestants are villains. The TV show even incorporates AI into its false narrative, more interested in ratings at the expense of truth.
Despite not being totally convincing as the impoverished every-man, the chiseled Powell gives it his all (and looks great naked) in the entertaining, frenetic action scenes, which sadly are outnumbered by an exhausting amount of story exposition and clumsy, uneven pacing. Brolin and Domingo are also solid as the villainous network executive and the smarmy TV show host, and the film has lots of fun cameos (William H. Macy, Debi Mazar, Michael Cera among them), but it is about 30 minutes too long, wearing out its welcome by its lackluster third act.
REEL FACTS
• The original 1987 film was set in 2017. This version is set in 2025.
• Glen Powell, who edged out Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth for the starring role, says Top Gun: Maverick co-star Tom Cruise called him before filming began to offer advice on how to carry the film and how to look cool while running on camera.
• The N logo for the network is a not-so-subtle dig by director Edgar Wright at Netflix, for running trailers for his 2013 film The World’s End that gave away the ending.
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