The Running Man

Pretty warmed-over stuff, this future world of the terminal TV game shows, and director Glaser fails to muster much pace and punch. Lifer Schwarzenegger, framed for a massacre he didn't commit, hops the hutch with fellow con (Kotto), hooks up with love interest (Alonso), and briefly takes refuge with the underground revolutionaries before being betrayed and recaptured. Offered up to the bloodthirsty populace as a sacrificial contestant on TV's Running Man show, he is shot down a chute on to the wasteland killing floor to be hunted by big, grotesquely specialised assassins - Buzzsaw, Subzero, Dynamo, Fireball. None is unstoppable, and each is awarded the appropriate jokey payoff line. The film doesn't look good; it's as if the flat lighting and boring set of the TV show had infected everything else. And Big Arnie's quilted outfit makes him look like a duvet. (From the novel by Richard Bachman, i.e. Stephen King.