THE RUNNING MAN : Tuesday 18th November 2025

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'THE RUNNING MAN' this week at my local multiplex cinema, and this American dystopian action thriller film is Co-Written for the screen, Co-Produced and Directed by Edgar Wright, and is based on the 1982 novel written by Stephen King under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. It is also the second big screen adaptation following the 1987 film of the same name that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Directed by Paul Michael Glaser. Edgar Wright's previous feature film output takes in his feature debut with 1995's 'A Fistful of Fingers' and then 'Shaun of the Dead' in 2004, 'Hot Fuzz' in 2007, 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World' in 2010, 'The World's End' in 2013, 'Baby Driver' in 2017, and 'Last Night in Soho' in 2021. The film was released here in Australia, the UK and the US last week, cost US$110M to produce, has so far grossed US$31M and has garnered mixed critical acclaim.

In the near future, the USA is a dystopian authoritarian state ruled over by a major media Network, where the majority of the population live in poverty with little access to even basic healthcare. The Network appease people with their trashy, violent reality and game shows through their FreeVee TV's, which are literally everywhere. The Network's most popular show is 'The Running Man', where three 'Runners' are selected from literally hundreds of other wannabes, and can win US$1B if they survive for thirty days while the Network's 'Hunters', led by the mysterious Evan McCone (Lee Pace), and ordinary citizens try to hunt and kill them, by any means possible. Given US$1K and a twelve-hour headstart, Runners are required to film themselves for ten minutes every day and post in their recoded message which is then played on air the next day, or else they'll forfeit the contest. 

Ben Richards (Glen Powell), is a blue-collar worker living in the slums of Co-Op city, is unable to afford influenza medicine for his two year old daughter, Cathy, after being fired from several of his former jobs for insubordination and is blacklisted. Over his wife, Sheila's (Jayme Lawson), objections, Ben tries out for the Network and following exhaustive physical and mental testing is selected for 'The Running Man'. 

Ben agrees to participate when Executive Producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), who can be very persuasive, offers him an advance for Cathy's medication and a safe house for his family. As the show begins with great fanfare, Ben acquires fake IDs and two disguises - one as an Executive Manager and the other as a Priest, from his associate Molie (William H. Macy). Ben travels to New York, where he watches live coverage on his TV from his hotel room where is is holed up as Runner Tim Jansky (Martin Herlihy) is found seemingly flaunting the rules and is gunned down in the street and killed by the Hunters.

He then flees to Boston and hides out at a hostel, but is soon afterwards located by the Hunters. An intense firefight ensues, which leads to an explosion that takes out the entire hostel block and kills eight network soldiers. Ben escapes through a sewer and is found and sheltered by Bradley Throckmorton (Daniel Ezra) and his family. Bradley, an anti-network activist, teaches Ben about the network's propaganda and deceit, which Ben relays in his next recording. Instead, the Network replaces him with a foul-mouthed deepfake, resulting in Ben being kicked out of the house by Bradley's mother. Bradley then directs Ben to a fellow activist in Derry, Maine, where he says he'll be safe. 

During his journey, he learns that second runner Jenni Laughlin (Katy O'Brian) has been killed having narrowly escaped from a casino in a pink convertible car but then crashing it into a barn whereupon she was torched by two flamethrower wielding young kids. Ben is now the sole remaining runner, and he has earned the support of the poor and working-class who plaster the slogan 'Ben Lives' on walls and placards, almost everywhere. On the fourteenth day, Ben arrives at the home of Bradley's friend, Elton Parrakis (Michael Cera), who believes Ben's survival can help fuel a rebellion against the Network. Elton gives Ben a map to a bunker built by his late father, where he can survive the full thirty days, even though its designed to sustain a life for three years. 

As he tries to leave early one morning, Ben is alerted by Elton's aged mother Victoria (Sandra Dickinson) who recognises Ben from her ardent watching of his TV programme and wants to alert the Network. He successfully averts her from doing so, but Elton alerts them anyway and within under five minutes the property is swarming with Hunters. However, Elton has booby trapped the entire house and successfully dispatches many of them. Ben and Elton escape in a buggy filled with explosives, but McCone kills Elton with a single shot to the head from a helicopter above, and another Hunter confronts Ben on a bridge. Driving towards each other at speed, Ben crashes the buggy into the Hunter which erupts in a ball of flame, while he escapes by jumping into the river below.

Traveling north as per the map provided by Elton, Ben discovers that the location of the bunker has been covered over by a new housing development still under construction. Ben is later caught on surveillance but escapes using the car of upperclass woman Amelia Williams (Emilia Jones), taking her hostage. Amelia initially believes the propaganda about the Hunters being there to safeguard her kind from Ben's violent unruly kind, until she witnesses on her in-car TV screen how the show's content differs from reality. They travel to an airfield guarded by McCone and the Network, where Killian instructs McCone to let them pass. Ben commandeers a plane on the pretext that he is wearing a suicide vest of Black Irish high explosive that would incinerate everyone within a half mile radius. and he want's it to take him and Amelia across the border into Canada. On the flight, Killian calls Ben to offer him a contract for his own network show and to become Hunter 6. When Ben refuses, Killian shows footage of McCone and the Hunters murdering Sheila and Cathy, which is played on the show to give him the audience's sympathy.

Ben realises the flight crew are McCone's remaining Hunters and fights them in the cockpit eventually killing them. When he fights McCone, he learns that the latter is a former runner who survived 29 days during the show's first season, having taken Killian's deal. After a violent fight, Ben kills McCone and gives a parachute to Amelia so she can escape. Killian again offers Ben his own show and a chance to speak on live TV, but Ben refuses again and tries to convince viewers to turn off their FreeVee. The Network redirects the plane to their headquarters and runs a deepfake of Ben threatening to crash into the building. The plane is shot down by a missile before it hits the building. Ben survives the attack by escaping in the plane's auto-eject pod, and later reunites with Sheila and his daughter, whose deaths were faked by Killian.

Sometime later, Amelia recovers the plane's black box flight recorder and leaks the uncensored recordings to the public. This turns public opinion against the Network and ultimately leads to a rebellion. As the next season of The Running Man begins, host Bobby Thompson (Colman Domingo) senses the hostility in the audience and quits on the spot after leading the show for twenty years, leaving Killian to very reluctantly take over as host - to which he lasts less than a minute after the a riot breaks out among the audience. Running to get away, Killian looses his way during the audience frenzy and crashes through a screen backdrop onto the main stage. Lying flat on the ground watching the melee unfolding before him, Ben emerges from the crowd, and points McCoon's gun (inscribed with word 'Destiny' in block capitals) at him. Counting down 5-4-3-2-1 and Action, Ben shoots Killian, whom he had sworn at their very first meeting that he would fuck him over.

My two other movie buddies and I came away from 'The Running Man' having enjoyed Edgar Wright's apparently more faithful adaptation of the Stephen King novel, and praising Glen Powell's performance as the put-upon but nonetheless undefeated Ben Richards. This movie has something to say about out of control corporate capitalism, society's insatiable appetite for in your face and outlandish media offerings, and the great divide that exists between the wealthy and those living on or below the poverty line. Throw into the mix a good dose of well executed action sequences, a strong supporting cast, a fast paced thrill ride that will not leave you wanting, and the charm and charisma of the film's leading man, and you have a movie that is well worth the price of cinema entry, and is an improvement on the 1987 original. 

'The Running Man' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

SINNERS : Tuesday 22nd April 2025

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'SINNERS' earlier this week, and this American period supernatural horror film is Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Ryan Coogler, whose former feature film output includes his big screen debut with 'Fruitvale Station' in 2013, which he would follow up with 'Creed' in 2015, 'Black Panther' in 2018 and 'Black Panther : Wakanda Forever' in 2022. This film was released last week too in the US, had a production budget of US$90M, has so far recovered US$87M, and has generated universal critical acclaim.

Here then, set in the early 1930's in the Southern United States during the height of the Jim Crow era, the film follows identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who return to their home town in the Mississippi Delta after years in Chicago working for the mob. Using money stolen from gangsters, they purchase a sawmill from racist landowner Hogwood (David Maldonado) to start a juke joint for the local black community (an informal establishment featuring music, dancing, gambling, and drinking, primarily operated by African Americans in the southeastern USA). Their cousin Sammie 'Preacher Boy' Moore (Miles Caton), an aspiring guitarist, joins them despite opposition from his pastor father Jedidiah (Saul Williams), who warns his son that blues music is the music of the Devil. 

The twin brothers quickly set about recruiting other staff - pianist Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson) as performers, Smoke's estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) as cook, local Chinese shopkeepers Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo Chow (Yao) as suppliers, and cotton field worker Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) as bouncer. Meanwhile, Stack reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who passes for white, and who tells Stack that she is still angry at him for abandoning her when he left for Chicago. Smoke and Annie argue over her belief in things otherworldly, as Annie insists her practices kept the twins safe, but Smoke bitterly reminds her that their infant daughter still died. Elsewhere, Irish-immigrant vampire Remmick (Jack O'Connell) flees from Choctaw vampire hunters and violently turns a pair of local farmers into vampires.

At the joint's opening night, Sammie's guitar playing accompanied by Delta Slim's skills at the keyboard is remarkable, and unknowingly summons spirits of both past and present to join the already captivated crowd. The performance draws Remmick's attention, and he arrives with his two farmer vampires, offering money and music for entry. Suspicious, the twins hesitate and the vampires leave. Reminding the twins that the bar needs the income, Mary meets Remmick outside but becomes wary of his group. 

As she starts to return to the bar, Remmick glides into the air and bites her, turning her into one of his own. She returns inside, where she seduces Stack and bites him. Smoke intervenes and shoots her unloading several rounds into her at point blank range, but she is unharmed by regular bullets, gets up smiling and escapes. Cornbread is also attacked by other vampires and turned as well.

The juke joint quickly empties, and so the vampires attack and turn the fleeing patrons, including Bo. Stack comes round as a vampire, but Annie repels him with pickled garlic juice. She advises the survivors that only silver or wooden stakes can kill vampires, and that they cannot enter a building unless invited. Now leading a horde of vampires but still unable to enter the bar, Remmick tries his luck at negotiating. He praises Sammie's supernatural talent with the guitar and states that vampirism offers immortality, freedom, and escape from racism, and that he also wants to use Sammie's skills to summon the spirits of his lost community. He also warns that Hogwood, who secretly heads the local KKK, plans to attack the joint at dawn. When the survivors refuse his offer, Remmick and Bo confront Grace, threatening to attack her young daughter Lisa (Helena Hu). A desperate Grace dares the horde to attack the juke joint, inviting them in. In the ensuing battle, Grace and Annie are killed and Delta Slim sacrifices himself by slashing his own wrist with a broken bottle of Irish beer, distracting the horde with the smell of his own fresh blood from the remaining survivors. 

Smoke, Sammie, and Pearline attempt to escape, but Remmick and Stack ambush them. Smoke and Stack clash in an intense head to head and toe to toe fight, while Sammie and Pearline face off with Remmick. Pearline is bitten and begs Sammie to flee before turning. In a final confrontation, Sammie smashes his guitar over Remmick's head, before Smoke arrives just in time to kill him with a stake. As the sun rises, the vampire horde are all incinerated. 

Urging Sammie to flee, Smoke ambushes and kills Hogwood and his fellow Klan members in a hail of bullets, but is himself mortally shot. Before dying, he has a vision of Annie and their baby daughter. Sammie, battered, bruised and grief-stricken, returns to his father's church. His father pleads with him to renounce the Devil's music and seek salvation. Sammie refuses, leaving with the broken off neck of his guitar in hand.

In a mid-credits sequence we fast forward to October 1992, some sixty years later, to a bar in Chicago where Sammie (Buddy Guy) has just come off stage as a celebrated blues musician. Stack and Mary pay a visit to the now elderly Sammie, where Stack reveals that Smoke spared him that night at the juke joint, allowing him to go free under the condition that Sammie would live in peace. The couple offers Sammie the chance at immortality, but he declines. Stack asks Sammie to play a song, and Sammie obliges. Afterwards, as Stack and Mary are leaving, Sammie tells them that though that fateful night still haunts him, until the sun went down, it was the greatest day of his life. Stack agrees, and turning back to face Sammie says it was the last time he saw Smoke, the last time he saw the sun, and the only time he ever truly felt free.

With 'Sinners' Director Ryan Coogler has delivered us a genre bending film that is all at once part vampire horror film, part historical drama, part social thriller, and part all singing all dancing musical offering all wrapped up in a neat entertaining package that is exciting and will keep you engaged from start to finish. The performances of the principle cast are all top notch, and while the first half drags a little, Ryan Coogler uses this time wisely to establish the characters and their respective back stories so that we are invested in their joy and commitment to Smoke, Stack and the juke joint and then their pain and anguish as the proverbial brown stuff hits the fan. This film needs to be experienced in a movie theatre, and you won't be disappointed. It is worthy of the financial, critical and awards success that surely will follow for this original story.

'Sinners' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THE BATMAN : Wednesday 3rd March 2022.

I saw the M Rated 'THE BATMAN' at an advance screening earlier this week. This much-hyped highly anticipated American superhero film is based on the DC Comics character Batman, and is a reboot of the Batman film franchise. The film is Directed, Co-Produced and Co-Written for the screen by Matt Reeves, whose previous film making credits take in 'Cloverfield' in 2008, 'Let Me In' in 2010, 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' in 2014 and 'War for the Planet of the Apes' in 2017. Development began after Ben Affleck was cast as Batman in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) in 2013. Affleck signed on to Direct, Produce, Co-Write, and star in 'The Batman', but had reservations about the project and dropped out. Reeves took over and reworked the story. This film saw its World Premier screening in London on 23rd February and gets a worldwide release from this week having been delayed twice from an initial June 2021 release date due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film cost somewhere in the vicinity of US$190M to produce, and has a running time of just a few minutes shy of three hours. This film is intended to be the launch pad for a Batman shared universe, with two sequels planned and two spin-off television series in development for HBO Max.

On the evening of Halloween, Gotham City Mayor Don Mitchell Jnr. (Rupert Penry-Jones) is at home watching himself on the TV in earlier coverage of his debate with Mayoral candidate Bella Real (Jayme Lawson). He is talking anxiously on the phone. His family are out trick or treating. Lurking in the shadows directly behind him, and unseen is a masked figure who pounces upon Mitchell inflicting several fatal blows to his head with a steel carpet tucker, and then wraps his head in gaffer tape and inscribes 'No More Lies' on his face with a red pen. He also cuts off his thumb, which it is deduced was done before he died. Billionaire Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) who has been operating for the past two years or so in Gotham as the masked vigilante Batman investigates the murder scene with Lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) of the Gotham City Police Department. Gordon discovers that the murderer, known as the Riddler (Paul Dano), has left a cryptic message for Batman, but GCPD Commissioner Pete Savage (Alex Ferns), gives Gordon a hard time for allowing the Batman onto the crime scene, and forces him to leave. Later, the Riddler kills Savage and leaves another message for Batman. 

Batman and Gordon discover that the Riddler left a USB stick in Mitchell's car with his thumb attached to it (a thumb drive) which contained images of Mitchell with a woman, Annika, at the Iceberg Lounge, a nightclub operated by mobster Carmine Falcone's (John Turturro) lieutenant Penguin (a heavily made up and unrecognisable Colin Farrell). Batman questions the Penguin, who claims to know nothing, but notices that Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz), Annika's roommate and girlfriend, works there as a waitress. He follows Selina to question Annika, but she disappears. Batman persuades Selina to go back to the Iceberg Lounge to search for answers. Through Selina, Batman learns that Savage was on Falcone's payroll, and so is District Attorney Gil Colson (Peter Sarsgaard) who is seen at the club with a bunch of co-workers living it up. Selina shuts down visual and aural contact when Batman presses her about her relationship with Falcone.

The Riddler abducts Colson just as he steps into his car having left the Iceberg Lounge and promptly straps a time bomb to his neck. Bruce Wayne attends the funeral of Mitchell, and sends Colson crashing through the church at the wheel of his car sending bodies in all directions. Wayne rushes to the aid of Mitchell's young son to get him out of harms way. The Police descend on the vehicle and order the driver out of the vehicle. Out steps Colson, with ticking bomb strapped to his neck, with another message for Batman taped to his chest. When Batman arrives at the scene, the Riddler calls him via Colson's phone which is taped to his hand, and threatens to detonate the bomb if Colson cannot answer three riddles within two minutes. Batman gives the answers to the first two to a panicked Colson, but Colson refuses to answer the third—name the informant who gave the GCPD information that led to a historic drug bust ending mobster Sal Maroni's very lucrative business. As a result, the bomb explodes after the two minute deadline is reached. 

Batman and Gordon come to a conclusion that the informant may be the Penguin and track him to a drug deal. There they discover that Maroni's operation never actually ended and many GCPD officers are in fact involved. Selina inadvertently exposes them when she arrives to steal a stash of cash. As the Penguin flees behind the wheel of his car, Selina discovers Annika's corpse in a car boot. Batman captures the Penguin after chasing him in the Batmobile but comes to the conclusion that he was not the informant.

Batman and Gordon follow the Riddler's clues to the ruins of an former orphanage operated by Bruce's parents Thomas and Martha. They learn that the Riddler was a resident at the orphanage and holds a grudge against Thomas, and as Thomas is dead, the sins of the father are visited upon the son. Bruce's butler and caretaker, Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis), is hospitalised after opening a letter bomb addressed to Bruce. The Riddler then leaks evidence to the media claiming that Thomas, who was running for Mayor when he was murdered, hired Falcone to kill a journalist for threatening to reveal embarrassing details about Martha's history of mental illness. Bruce, who grew up believing his father was a good upstanding man, confronts Alfred when he comes round in hospital. Alfred confirms that Thomas asked Falcone to intimidate the journalist, but decided to turn Falcone over to the Police after learning of the journalist's murder - he surmises, without clear proof however, that Falcone had Thomas and Martha killed to prevent this.

Selina later advises Batman that Falcone is her father and that he neglected her for much of her life, and especially after her mother died when she was eight years old. She learns that Annika was killed because Mitchell told her that Falcone was the informant, and as a result is determined to kill him. Batman and Gordon arrive at the Iceberg Lounge in time to stop her and arrest Falcone, but the Riddler shoots him dead from a nearby building, as he is being escorted to a waiting patrol car. The Batman quickly runs up to the Riddler's apartment, and gets a tip off that a man was seen running down a fire escape immediately after the shot rang out, and is now sitting in a cafe across the street. Unmasked as forensics accountant Edward Nashton, the Riddler is locked up in Arkham State Hospital. Batman visits Nashton who reveals that he knows that the Batman is Bruce Wayne and that he was envious of the sympathy Bruce received after his parents' murder. Whilst they both grew up as orphans their lives couldn't have been more different, with Bruce living a life of privilege while he lived in abject poverty. While he was ignored, he harboured a desire to partner with Batman and become a similarly masked vigilante. Batman angrily rejects Nashton and discovers back at his apartment that the Riddler had parked seven car bombs around Gotham, all located strategically to detonate at the same time and to breach the city's defensive sea walls. 

The bombs destroy the sea walls around Gotham and rapidly flood the city. In the resultant chaos, Batman and Selina prevent a Riddler-inspired gang from assassinating Mayor-elect Bella Real. As Batman begins to aid the recovery efforts, Selina asks Batman to leave the city with her as she now deems Gotham beyond saving, saying that the Bat and the Cat has a nice ring to it, but Batman declines her offer saying that he has much work to do in trying to clean up Gotham. She leaves on her motorbike, with Batman following closely behind on his, and when they come to an intersection, they go in opposite directions. Meanwhile Nashton is beside himself in his jail cell because his plan failed. But a voice from a neighbouring cell tells him not to be so down on himself as Gotham loves nothing more than a good underdog story as the pair begin to laugh menacingly. That other inmate is assumed to be the Joker (Barry Keoghan in cameo and credited as 'unseen Arkham prisoner').

'The Batman' is an enthralling captivating detective story that melds good old fashioned police work with our caped crusader Superhero. It's dark, bleak, gritty and grim and seemingly always raining in Gotham City which only serves to add a sense of tension to the films key scenes. Here Matt Reeves has crafted a fresh take on an all too familiar Superhero that has seen over the last thirty years Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher, Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder helm various Batman instalments with varying degrees of success. Robert Pattinson is well cast as The Batman and the fractured emotionally torn Bruce Wayne, and he is ably supported by Paul Dano whose turn as the maniacal Riddler is right on point, while Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman adds kick-ass heft as Batman's reluctant foil, and would be love interest. With two further instalments to come, it will interesting to see where Reeves and Pattinson take us on Batman's next journey and whether the pairing can go one better than what they have been able to achieve here. See it on the big screen, and be prepared to remain glued to your seat for three hours, which like most critical reviews, is my only gripe about this film when thirty minutes less would have been prefect. 

'The Batman' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-