The Running Man (1987) on Netflix
Police captain Ben Richards refuses to fire on a food riot in a totalitarian America and is framed for the massacre. Forced onto a deadly game show, he must outrun its killers.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.6/10193,428 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes59%
Trailer
Plot summary
After an economic collapse, the United States has become a totalitarian police state that censors art, music and communication. The state broadcaster ICS keeps the population quiet with game shows in which prisoners fight for their lives. On The Running Man, hosted by Damon Killian, convicts called runners must survive lethal stalkers to win a pardon. Captain Ben Richards is arrested after he refuses an order to shoot at a crowd of hungry protesters in Bakersfield; the officers around him carry out the shooting, and he is blamed for it. He escapes a prison labor camp with two resistance fighters, Harold Weiss and William Laughlin, who want him to join their cause, but Richards wants only to survive. Damon Killian, hoping to lift the show's ratings, presses Richards to take part.
Cast
- Gus Rethwischas Buzzsaw
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Running Man (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was first due to shoot in Canada with George P. Cosmatos directing Christopher Reeve as Ben Richards. Paul Michael Glaser turned down an offer to direct, saying preproduction was too short; Cosmatos then left over budget disputes, Reeve was replaced by Schwarzenegger, and Andrew Davis was fired two weeks in, so Glaser was hired after all.
SPOILER
Originally, when Captain Freedom is shown killing Richards and Amber, audiences were meant to believe both had really died, with the film revealing only later that the deaths had been faked with computer graphics. After test screenings a producer had the edit changed, over screenwriter de Souza's objections, to make clear neither was dead.- The producers originally wanted the game-show host Chuck Woolery to play Damon Killian, but he was unavailable because of his hosting jobs on Love Connection and Scrabble. Schwarzenegger suggested Richard Dawson, because the two were close friends and he was a fan of Family Feud, which Dawson hosted.
- A lawsuit determined that the film had been plagiarised from the 1983 French film Le Prix du Danger, directed by Yves Boisset, and it took Boisset eight years to receive the damages he was entitled to, which he claimed barely covered the cost of bringing the action.
- De Souza said one of the producers of the television show American Gladiators sold his programme to a network using clips from The Running Man, telling them: "We're doing exactly this, except the murdering part".
