Michael Reuben
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The Running Man (Blu-ray)
Studio: Lionsgate
Rated: R
Film Length: 101 min.
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
HD Encoding: 1080p
HD Codec: AVC
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 7.1
Subtitles: English; English SDH; Spanish
MSRP: $19.99
Disc Format: 1 50 GB
Package: Keepcase
Theatrical Release Date: Nov. 13, 1987
Blu-ray Release Date: Feb. 9, 2010
Introduction:
The technology, the effects, the hairstyles, the Harold Faltermeyer score and especially the clothes are so dated that you’re constantly rolling your eyes. So why does The Running Man still feel relevant? It’s the damn TV.
The Feature:
I can’t provide a better introduction to The Running Man than the text crawl that opens the film:
[SIZE= smaller]Television is controlled by the state and a sadistic game show called “The Running Man” has become the most popular program in history. All art, music and communications are censored. No dissent is tolerated and yet a small resistance movement has managed to survive underground.
When high-tech gladiators are not enough to suppress the people’s yearning for freedom . . . more direct methods become necessary. [/SIZE]
[SIZE= smaller]
[/SIZE]
Immediately afterward, we see a policeman, Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger), ordered to gun down unarmed civilians engaged in a food riot. When he refuses, other cops implement the order, but all casualties are blamed on Richards. He’s branded “The Butcher of Bakersfield” and sent to prison.
Eventually Richards breaks out, but he and fellow escapees Laughlin (Yaphet Kotto) and Weiss (Marvin J. McIntyre) are recaptured and made contestants on “The Running Man”. In an improbable turn, they’re joined by a network employee, Amber Mendez (Maria Conchita Alonso), whose initial hostility to Richards changes to sympathy when she begins to suspect that he was framed.
The rules of “The Running Man” are simple: Contestants, a/k/a “runners”, are released into an urban wilderness left over from an earthquake that devastated much of Los Angeles (the date of the quake is given as 1997). Once released, the runners are pursued by “stalkers”, who are professional killers working for the network. If the runners make it to the end of the course, they get a chance at trial by jury or even a pardon. But that’s not what the audience wants to see. Both in the studio and at home, the audience for “The Running Man” bays for blood. Outside, in the camps for the homeless and unemployed, bets are placed on which stalker will score the next kill.
The host of “The Running Man” is Damon Killian, and in one of the great masterstrokes of casting, he’s played by Richard Dawson, who was already famous as the host of TV’s Family Feud. Dawson was canny enough to make Killian just a slight exaggeration of the persona he’d already perfected on “real” TV. By creating such an instantly recognizable presence, Dawson anchors the film in something genuine and familiar. No matter how cartoonish and absurd The Running Man becomes, it’s Killian who makes you feel that somehow, someday, a show like this might really make it on the air. As noted in one of the commentaries, a lot of successful game show hosts have a mean streak, and there’s a direct line of descent from Killian to Simon Cowell. (If you’re someone who enjoys coincidences, pay attention to the end credits; the choreography for the Vegas-like entertainment with which Killian fills “The Running Man” studio was done by none other than future American Idol judge Paula Abdul.)
Meanwhile, the plucky underground works tirelessly to find the network’s satellite uplink so that they can jam it and broadcast “the truth”. The Running Man takes place in a world where a single such broadcast can bring down a government, because the film is a comic book – and a cut-rate one at that. That’s why the enemies that Arnold/Richards dispatches have big physiques but use primitive hardware that’s easily turned against them. It’s not about the battle so much as about putting Arnold next to these outlandish figures in their ridiculous costumes. Rarely has Arnold been surrounded with such an eccentric collection of personalities, many of them not even professional actors. There’s Maria Conchita Alonso, whose accent, when matched with Arnold’s, often turns their dialogue into word salad; football great Jim Brown and future governor Jesse Ventura playing “stalkers”; and musicians Dweezil Zappa and Mick Fleetwood as members of the resistance movement. (Mick Fleetwood seems to be playing an elderly version of himself, since the character is named “Mic” and complains that the government burned his songs. He and an underling have the single best exchange in the film.) It’s the kind of film you watch and wonder what all these people are doing in the same movie.
The film’s political sensibility may be puerile, and it’s notion that the world can be saved by taking out a TV host is laughable, but its feel for the raw power of televised entertainment to enslave and enthrall is undeniable – and that power hasn’t decreased in the intervening years just because there are more channels, greater chatter and alternate means of delivery. The Running Man continues to resonate because there are still Killians on the air, and while they may not have direct lines to the Justice Department, their continued influence over millions of lives is undeniable.
Video:
The same people who complained about Ghostbusters probably won’t like The Running Man. It doesn’t look particularly good, but the question is whether it ever will. The film was an independent production that didn’t have a giant budget. It had a troubled shoot, and the result has never been polished or glossy. You can spot the limitations immediately in, e.g., the obvious matte work used to create the L.A. of the future. The image on this Blu-ray is the best the film has ever looked on video, but it’s still soft with inconsistent black levels. The weakest portion is the prison sequence, where blacks tend more toward grey (whether through underexposure or adjusted constrast). Scenes in the TV studio are sharply lit and feature bright colors; so these provide a better source for a pleasing image. While there’s no sequence in the film that stands out as strikingly detailed, it’s unclear to me whether there’s additional detail to be harvested from the image.
At approximately 29:00, at the point where Ben Richards’ “court-appointed agent” enters the room, there’s an odd jump that looks like a frame was dropped. It’s a minor glitch, but it wasn’t on the DVD.
Audio:
The DTS lossless track appears to be based on the DD 5.1 EX and DTS ES tracks created for the 2004 DVD. I’m not generally a fan of Dolby Surround tracks that have been pulled apart and repurposed for discrete formats, but this one has decent fidelity. The surround presence is fairly limited, which is probably just as well. Faltermeyer’s distinctive score dominates the track, for better or worse, along with crowds cheering and similar obvious candidates for ambient noise, such as the “jet car” ride into the game zone. There’s enough bass extension to give impact to explosions and body blows, and the dialogue is always clear. It’s not a showy track by today’s standards, but it serves the film.
Special Features:
All of the special features have been ported from the 2004 special edition DVD released under the Artisan label. Omitted from that edition’s features is a bit of fluff called “Meet the Stalkers”, which assembled mock biographical trivia and fictitious fan quotes for each of the stalkers and also Killian. (It probably would have required more BD-Java programming effort than it was worth.)
Commentary with Producer Tim Zinneman and Director Paul Michael Glaser. The two men are searching through memories that are almost twenty years old, but they’re interesting memories. Glaser replaced Andrew Davis two weeks into shooting, and his recollections are mostly practical and hands-on. Zinneman provides an overview.
Commentary with Executive Director Rob Cohen. Before becoming a director of popcorn action fare like The Fast and the Furious and XXX, Cohen was a producer. It was he who acquired the Richard Bachman (a/k/a Stephen King) novella of The Running Man, developed the script and went through a series of directors en route to a final product. Cohen’s account of the film’s long gestation is a fascinating reminder of just how unlikely it is that any film ever gets made. (Cohen notes with irony that, after firing numerous directors from the project, he himself was fired from it just before the film was completed.)
Cohen’s commentary is unabashedly political, dated in some respects and prescient in others. At the time, Arnold had not yet become governor of California, and Cohen accurately predicts his victory.
Lockdown on Main Street: Civil Liberties Post 9/11 (24:37) (SD; enhanced for 16:9). The focus is on the Patriot Act, and it’s probably better to leave it at that.
Game Theory: An Examination of Reality TV (20:15) (SD; enhanced for 16:9). Depending on one’s preexisting views, this “examination” can be either provocative or blindingly obvious.
Trailers (4:3; SD). The film’s theatrical trailer looks pretty beat-up. Also available both at startup and from the special features menu is a general trailer for Lionsgate Blu-ray, which can be skipped at startup with the chapter button.
In Conclusion:
I have no doubt that, if some network executive thought he could get away with it, The Running Man would be on the air today. And for anyone reading this and instantly thinking, “Yeah, Fox would do it!”, you’re wrong. As Killian would say, it’s all about ratings, and today the network desperate and venal enough to host the show would probably be NBC.
Equipment used for this review:
Panasonic BDP-BD50 Blu-ray player (DTS-HD MA decoded internally and output as analog)
Samsung HL-T7288W DLP display (connected via HDMI)
Lexicon MC-8 connected via 5.1 passthrough
Sunfire Cinema Grand amplifier
Monitor Audio floor-standing fronts and MA FX-2 rears
Boston Accoustics VR-MC center
SVS SB12-Plus sub
