Category: Glen Powell

THE RUNNING MAN (2025)

By Marc S. Sanders

Everything you see in the remake of The Running Man belongs.  So why doesn’t any of it work?  I think director Edgar Wright needs to have his feet held to the fire.  He made this movie with his eyes closed and his ears muffed.

Like the Stephen King (or under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman) story and the original 1987 picture with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a violent game show called “The Running Man” occupies the airwaves in a dystopian future.  Modifications from the first film are done to separate this picture from that one.  In the last film, contestants were violent criminals on the run to win freedom from incarceration.  Here, anybody can try out to win the cash prize of a billion dollars.  I’m not sure which is more faithful to King’s novella.  

Ben Richards (a name which always gets me thinking of The Fantastic Four; Ben Grimm, Reed Richards) is played by Glen Powell with a handsome athletic build but not the muscular physique of Schwarzenegger.  Powell looks more like an Everyman who auditions for one of this future’s various twisted game shows, hoping to win cash prizes that will rescue his wife and sick baby girl from poverty.  He never intended to get thrust into the ultra-violent “Running Man” though.  The object is to outlast and survive for thirty days while sadistic headhunters attempt to find him and deliver a gruesome televised slaughter.  The producer, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), foresees a ratings bonanza with Richards as his most wanted runner.

Glen Powell needs to enhance his career with his sudden popularity.  Between this film, Twisters and Top Gun: Maverick he is playing pick-up sticks on resurrected franchises, and he ends up being completely unmemorable and uninviting.  Other than a square chin, there’s nothing special about this guy and I never once felt empathy for his role here.  He does not convey fear or anger or humor like a Bruce Willis, a Tom Cruise or even an Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He’s boring.  Edgar Wright’s script with Michael Bacall does not help the actor either as The Running Man is neither quirky or offbeat like a dystopian action picture or a standard Edgar Wright piece (Scott Pilgrim Vs The World) should promise.

The most exciting ingredient is Coleman Domingo, one of my favorite actors working today.  He is so magnetic in anything he does that I can practically guarantee whatever pizzazz he brings as the larger-than-life game show host, Bobby T (Yes!  That’s his name!), carries no impact.  This script gives him nothing to do other than wear a purple sports jacket while belting out “WELCOME TO THE RUNNING MAN!!!”  If he was simply given all of Richard Dawson’s dialogue from the first film, Domingo could have elevated this drippy picture into something engaging and fun.

Lee Pace (The Lord Of The Rings) is fully masked until the third act and has little dialogue as he’s the hero’s main hunter.  Why waste such a charismatic actor?  He’s dressed in black with a black mask.  What’s fun about that? Josh Brolin sits behind a desk as the puppet master producer.  He plays his part like Josh Brolin on a press tour stop on The Today Show.  He’s really not acting at all.

It’s an eye-opening surprise to see Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) make an early appearance as another game show host for a different show.  This should offer magnificent promise.  Brilliant casting for an over-the-top comic performer.  I was waiting for Hayes and Domingo to get into a sparring match of egos for attention in this television world.  You know what happens, though? Sean Hayes is never seen again following his appearance ten minutes after the film begins.  Another overlooked waste of talent.

William H Macy is a good character actor for this kind of film.  Too bad he’s also given little to do other than to tell the hero to go see the guy played by Michael Cera.  Why not cut out the middle man and let Ben Richards just deal with Macy’s character? The Running Man is far from the leaner film it could have been.

Some of the action scenes in this violent tale work, and some don’t.  When Ben Richards catches up with Cera’s character, a run/hide shoot out in a two-story house plays like a video game with bannisters that come apart and rapid machine gun fire.  It’s edited quite well.  Later though, there’s a battle that occurs in the cockpit of a jumbo jet.  Gravity is disabled while gunfire and fisticuffs are at play and everything shakes and bounces so much that it’s hard to tell who gets the gun and who is shooting who.  This looks like the filmmakers were pressed against a deadline and just didn’t clean up or tighten the scene into something coherent.  I just stopped trying to focus on the film and waited for the scene to end with another escape by the dashing Ben Richards.

This screenplay feels like it was made up on the fly.  Glen Campbell is awarded several scenes to speechify melodramatic gargle.  Is there a noble cause that we are to learn about from The Running Man? Just as the third act is about to start, he hitches a ride with a young girl who we have never seen before.  Nor has she been referenced anywhere thus far.  Yet, she’s got something to say with some kind of cause on her mind as well.  This nameless sidekick takes over the movie for the next twenty minutes and then parachutes into open sky never to be seen again.  What was the point of this detour? Moreover, what the hell was she ever talking about?

This Running Man had all the ingredients to work with a stellar collection of fine actors who were up for the task of wit and satire amid ridiculous violence and totalitarianism.  With Edgar Wright at the helm, the new Running Man could have been a harkening back to Paul Verhoven’s ultra-violent tales of gonzo media silliness found in his movies like Robocop, Starship Troopers and Total Recall.

Sadly, Glen Powell is uninteresting, and the more amazing talents of the supporting cast were handed lackluster and witless material.  

The Running Man marches at a speed of sluggishness.  Better to turn off the TV and read Carrie or Misery.

TWISTERS

By Marc S. Sanders

Reader, often The Two Unpaid Critics will debate the merits or lack thereof in a film.  Usually, one likes the piece while the other does not.  It’s rare though when we both find fault with a movie but for entirely different reasons…and we argue about it.

Fair warning, a poorly constructed declaration is coming your way:

Twisters is better than Twister.  

However, this is like saying cat shit is tastier than dog shit.  

Understand, I had a grand ol’ time watching Twisters with Miguel by my side as the experience quickly gravitated to a Riff Trax viewing.  This apparent sequel to the stupidity that was released thirty years ago teaches us more about the nature of tornadoes.  Though when I insist that observation to Miguel, my comrade put me to the test and my giggles took hold of me because I couldn’t utter a single scientific fact.  Okay.  So it’s not that much brainier. Yet, it is brainier!!!

Twisters offers a background and a traumatic dimension to Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) who loses all but one of her entire collection of friendly storm chasers in the film’s prologue, and then weepily monologues about it later.  That’s what I wanted from Helen Hunt in the first movie.  Miguel rightfully questioned why she even needed to speak.  We were firsthand witnesses to this early tragedy.  

CURSES!!!! You foiled me again, Mig.

Okay, so with my arguments shredded to pieces within our debate, I heed to the fact that I am no Jack Kennedy.  Yet, at least I could laugh at how utterly ridiculous Twisters is.

Kate is requested back to her home state of Oklahoma to locate powerful tornadoes that now can be studied with new triangular sensors, each respectively called Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion.  That garbage can called Dorothy has been put out to pasture.  There’s also a Wizard van. Cute wink and nod names.  No Glinda. No Witch. No Munchkin. No Flying Monkey. How lazy can a tornado movie get?

This corporation with the high-tech gear is competing against a convoy of redneck grunge daredevils led by Tyler, The Tornado Wrangler (Glen Powell).  He fits the persona with the cowboy hat that Brad Pitt wore in Thelma & Louise, along with the flannel shirts and a big ass belt buckle below his ripped chest.  

Tyler’s off road pickup is tricked out with anchors to drill in the ground holding his vehicle in place while he drives right into the middle of a storm.  He’ll also launch fireworks straight up into a funnel.  Whatever it takes to impress his You Tube followers.  

Get this!  Tyler is one of the most educated people in the world on meteorology.  Has to be true!!!! Absolutely has to be, because Glen Powell would never agree to portray a daredevil redneck without a brain to complement his chestnut hair and five o’clock shadow.

Twisters fails at suspense, but unintentionally wins at outrageous comedy when the movie opts to have its terrible tornadoes attack Americana.  As soon as they show small town USA with the little league softball game, I broke out laughing.  I was waiting for the homemaker to put out a pie on her windowsill.  Where’s Bob Seger singing “Like A Rock” from those Chevy commercials?  Tyler, Kate and the gang race to save everyone in town single-handedly without ever calling emergency services.  Only ONE COP appears in the whole movie. Fortunately, once the storm moves on from its devastation, there’s a complete clear road with absolutely no debris for the Tyler’s gang to drive on through. I mean does this movie think for itself or what?

We are treated to people flying away and a water tower toppling over.  A movie house rips apart while Frankenstein shows on the screen.  There’s the inevitable moment when a character gets a leg stuck under wreckage while the others try to get him free but can’t lift him out as the storm bears down.  But wait!!!! At just the last second– I saw this in episodes of The Incredible Hulk and CHiPs and…um…well…Twister!

Earlier in the film, Tyler and Kate have an opportunity to settle their differences while taking in a rodeo.  Of course, Tyler the redneck meteorologist and Tornado Wrangler used to be a rodeo clown as well.  

Then!!!!

What’s this?  

“We gotta get these people to safety??”  

“Is there a basement around here?”

Apparently, Oklahoma is running low on basements.  Not a single basement anywhere in the state where the wind comes sweeping down the plains!!!!!  

Twisters fails because it is paint by numbers, and it shouldn’t be.  It should never be this transparent. The most unpredictable of weather phenomena is so laughably unsurprising when it should be dazzling and frightening and nail biting.  None of it is new.  Everything you expect to happen, happens.

This picture even fails at lending a nasty bad guy to its screenplay.  The rich old guy with the bolo tie, a true indicator of villainy, tours around the devastation. He’s offering to buy the properties of people who have lost their homes so that further profitability can be made with ongoing research into tornado activity.  Yeah.  This guy is a regular Darth Vader or Hannibal Lechter, alright.  Hang him in the town square and then stone his rotting carcass.  Seriously, what’s so wrong with this guy’s intentions?  Kate is disgusted for some reason, but if I just lost my house and my farm and my crops and my flat screen and all my blu rays, heck yeah, I’ll take this fat cat’s money.  

Miguel refused to write a review for Twisters.  However, I’m taking free liberty to share his compounded thoughts. As the end credits rolled over home movie footage of the happy cast, he declared this film is devoid of any kind of suspense, whatsoever.  He’s not wrong, and neither am I.  

Twisters is better than Twister but for all the wrong reasons.

TOP GUN: MAVERICK

By Marc S. Sanders

Top Gun: Maverick is why we should never, ever give up on movie theaters and only settle for the flat screen TV.  This is a film, a sequel to a very hokey, cheesy 1980s blockbuster, that will top my list of most unexpected surprises.  This picture seemed inconceivable to accept, and yet, barring an unnecessary love story subplot, I relished every second of it.  Finally, a movie delivers more, a lot more, than its trailers ever promised.

One of Tom Cruise’s best films has him return to preppy boy Navy Aviator pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.  He’s a captain now, declining opportunities for promotion over the last near 35 years since we first saw him on screen in 1986.  Like Cruise, Maverick looks like he’s barely aged.  So, with that in mind, I guess we can accept that he can jack up his Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle to unbelievable speeds with no helmet, and can take a super powered jet to Mach 10 speed, crash it and survive with everything on his person still intact.

Maverick is called upon by his old Top Gun classmate and former competitor Iceman (Val Kilmer) to teach a class of the current one percent of elite fighter pilots.  They are about to embark on a mission to take out an enemy weapons depot hidden behind treacherous low altitude mountain terrain with sharp curves and narrow pathways.  The area is also highly secured with machine guns, rockets, advanced radar, and enemy fighter jets.  This film truly convinced me that this mission is actually impossible.  Even Ethan Hunt of the Impossible Mission Force couldn’t survive this. 

The highlight of Top Gun: Maverick is of course the aerial training and combat maneuvers done with actual F-18 jets that Cruise has gone on record insisting that the cast fly in.  The barest minimum of CGI and manufactured effects were used.  As a producer powerhouse in Hollywood, if Tom Cruise demands his action to be as convincing as possible, you are going to get your finished product.  Much of the second act of the film focuses on Maverick outsmarting his students in the skies.  These are the best the country has to offer but they haven’t encountered Maverick yet.  The planes fly at one another and over each other and spiral together like a well synchronized ballet.  I believe the footage that Tony Scott provided in the first Top Gun film still holds up very well.  In this new film, it’s a tremendous enhancement. I know nothing about the laws of physics or computing the trajectories a jet can make at a particular speed, but what this film demonstrates is that what seems inconceivable is downright actual.  You can not help but be impressed.

Still, to satisfy my particular movie requirements cannot hinge on action alone.  I have to care about the characters.  The characters are the stakes at play in dangerous action films like Die Hard or Indiana Jones.  It’s what heightens the suspense.  Fortunately, the script from Peter Craig takes time to invest in an older, more mature Maverick who remains haunted, but wiser following the loss of his best friend and co-pilot Goose.  Now, Goose’s son, code name Rooster (Miles Teller) is one of the stand out students who holds a grudge against Maverick.  It’s not as simple as the guy losing his father at a young age.  There’s more to it to be revealed. 

Teller plays well off of Cruise, as do the other hot shot students made up of Monica Barbaro, Lewis Pullman, Jay Ellis, and Glen Powell.  They’re all daredevil pilots like the first film offered, but they are written with more believability this time.  These are not the frat house beach bum guys that were so often shown in 1980s pictures.  Powell, known as Hangman, and Teller’s Rooster fill the Iceman/Maverick opposition here.  Only this time, it gets more personal as the characters go after their back stories and history.  Maverick is caught in the middle.  So, the drama is well played here. 

Director Joseph Kosinski makes the mission easy to comprehend.  Graphic maps show the impossible trajectory these pilots are expected to face.  The audience easily understands the challenges of going at impossibly low altitudes followed by fast upward careens into near atmospheric space while still trying to maintain consciousness and not get shot down. 

At the very least, to enjoy this picture, I think I’m thankful that I’m not a Navy pilot.  If I was, perhaps I’d be apt to dismiss the daring stunts that are committed over the course of the film.  I don’t want to know what can and can’t be done.  Let me have my illusion.  What’s especially appreciated is the perspective you’re given from the cockpit of these jets whether they are flying in a straight line, or alongside another plane or when Cruise himself is there in his trademark Maverick helmet taking his aircraft into an inverted and upside-down position with the top of the snowcapped mountains beneath him.  It’s positively mind-blowing. 

Maybe you have an idea of how the film will end up.  I won’t spoil it, but I certainly stopped thinking about it as the movie played along.  This movie had my undivided attention for just over two hours.  Moments occur where characters are in such convincing peril that any outcome would have worked and kept the integrity of the film.

Naturally, there’s a love story.  Most people didn’t care for the romance of the first film.  Not me.  I really liked how Kelly McGillis and Cruise performed together.  It was sweet and sensitive.  It took its time.  (See my review.)  For this picture, McGillis wasn’t welcomed back.  Google her quite frank and very honest response as to why she’s not here.  Instead, Jennifer Connelly romances Cruise as a bartender named Penny Benjamin (yes, the Admiral’s daughter).  Opposite Cruise, they look like a good couple.  However, when their shared scenes come up, honestly if you need a pee break this is when to rush out of the theatre.  The two characters don’t challenge one another like the first time around.  Penny has to just hide Maverick from her teen daughter.  Meh.  That’s sitcom fare.  This is nothing terrible here.  It’s just not overly necessary.  Does Maverick need to have a love interest?  Is it the end all be all?  This movie would have held up just fine without the love story.  Just be glad there’s another shirtless beach scene for the guys to frolic around this time with a couple of footballs. 

Without question, to date as of this writing, Top Gun: Maverick is the best picture I’ve seen this year.  I already declared the inventiveness of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once as one of the reasons why that film is one of the best of the year.  Cruise’s film tops it though.  The craftsmanship on display is like nothing you’ve seen before.  It challenges the technical marvels of James Cameron’s auspicious achievements and raises the bar for anything to come out after it.

If people like Tom Cruise and other daring producers in Hollywood can manufacture films on this level of story, adventure and suspense, then please, please, please do not close up the Cinematic Multiplexes.  Top Gun: Maverick is meant for the big screen; the biggest screen you can find with the best sound system available.  I’ll be sure to see again it while it remains in theatres.  In fact, release this film every summer until something else tops it.  It is a that good a film.