Well, nobody can blame Prime Video’s The Runner for lying to its audience. Directed, somehow, by the usually reliable Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland, State of Play), The Runner is literally 90-minutes of Gal Gadot running through Scotland. If it were designed to be a travelogue of the city, that would be one thing, and preferable to the embarrassingly stupid thriller that we got instead. There are films that have used the real-time conceit effectively, but when done poorly, the countdown clock serves as an excruciating reminder that this 90-minute movie feels like 3 hours.
You’d think that the leggy Gadot racing through busy London streets would be exciting, or if nothing else, kinetic. It’s insane how much of a drag it actually is, though, with the city serving as little more than a series of manufactured obstacles for her character, Maia, a powerhouse attorney with an important trial set to take place later that day. Her key witness is tucked away safely so that nothing happens to him. However, during her morning run, Maia gets a phone call from a mysterious stranger who says he’s kidnapped her diabetic son. He’s hacked into her phone and has access to everything; he can see Maia wherever she goes and whoever she speaks to. As long as she keeps running through the city, things will be okay. It becomes clear that the caller needs Maia to murder the witness if she wants her son back alive.
What’s the point of making Maia run through the city to achieve this goal? You got me; other than that, there would be no movie called The Runner if she didn’t. Mark Gibson’s screenplay comes up with all sorts of minor roadblocks: traffic, crowded streets, pickpockets snatching Maia’s phone briefly, etc. She overcomes these pretty easily; in one case, taking advantage of London racism to get a Black pursuer off her back. There’s a tease of something violent in Maia’s past that makes her ideal to the caller’s murderous demand, but the reveal is the kind of cheap swerve designed to rescue a lame movie from itself. No dice here.
I’m a fan of Gadot, and feel she’s been unfairly written off for her politics, but also because she’s no longer Wonder Woman, as if that was her decision. People forget she is the main reason those movies succeeded. The problem is that her choices since then have been crap, with Heart of Stone, Red Notice, and Snow White all humiliating flops that did her no favors. The Runner isn’t going to change anyone’s negative perception of Gadot. The screenplay paints Maia as brilliant, resourceful, and ready for anything. It goes to absurd lengths to prove it in the final act because we only see panic and desperation for the rest of the movie.
While watching The Runner, I was reminded of a much better movie that it shares a lot in common with, Run Lola Run, in which Franka Potente has 20 minutes to find enough money to save her boyfriend. The propulsive camerawork had a purpose, carrying the story forward by leaps and bounds and capturing the unpredictability of the moment. The Runner‘s cinematography by Danny Boyle confidante Anthony Dod Mantle accomplishes the opposite. All of the whipping and panning and frenzied shots of Maia screaming don’t ramp up the tension, they just leave you bored.
Gadot deserves better material than this, but hey, she chose to do it. If there’s one good thing to come out of The Runner, it’s that everyone involved with it must’ve gotten a good workout.
