The Running Man never really feels like an Edgar Wright movie

So how, then, to explain The Running Man, Wright’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1982 novel about a predatory, lethal game show? For roughly the first two-thirds of its running time (so to speak), Wright’s version of The Running Man plays the story straight — at least, more surface-level and sincere than his best movies, which typically bring the audience in on the joke early and often. And then the film goes entirely off the rails, to the point where it stops feeling like an Edgar Wright movie altogether, and starts looking like a story mandated by studio execs with no sense of humor at all.