Plot: Maia Marten has built her life on being one step ahead — a sharp, resourceful, high-powered lawyer at the top of London’s legal world. During her routine morning run, a single phone call shatters her world: her son has been taken. The instructions to get him back are simple and merciless — keep moving, follow every command, and tell no one. Stop, and he dies. Forced to sprint through the city and obey a series of sinister commands, Maia must confront an impossible question: how far will she go to bring her son home?
Review: I love a good real-time thriller. Few have successfully kept the pace and momentum going from opening to closing credits, but there have been many solid attempts, ranging from Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth to Nick of Time and, most recently, the films Saturday Night and The Invite. There is also the 1998 German thriller Run Lola Run, directed by Tom Tykwer and starring Franka Potente, with which The Runner has much more in common. The Runner finds Gal Gadot in the lead as she takes the title seriously and travels across the city of London as someone manipulates her through her phone. With a brisk momentum and short 84-minute running time, The Runner is an intense thriller with some interesting moments, even if it does not rise above the many other films that have used the same trope. Even with Gal Gadot doing her best to emulate Tom Cruise’s energetic on-screen sprints, The Runner does not quite cross the finish line.
Clocking in at just barely eighty minutes by the time the end credits start, The Runner throws us right in with London-based attorney and single mother Maia Marten (Gal Gadot) as she drops her son, Noah (Rory Wilmot), at school. Noah has diabetes and monitors his glucose, something that will clearly factor into the plot as the film progresses, and relies on his mother to walk him to class each day. Maia tries to give Noah the confidence to be independent, but worries about him nonetheless. Within the first fifteen minutes, we learn that Maia is in a casual relationship with colleague Tom (Alfred Enoch) and is preparing for a major trial that very day involving the prosecution of a crime boss. As she takes her morning job, Maia answers her phone, where a mysterious Caller (Damian Lewis) threatens Noah’s life if Maia doesn’t do exactly what he commands. With just an hour to follow through, Maia must run across the city while obeying the rules that the caller sets forth.
With an on-screen ticking clock that pops up periodically, The Runner owes a debt to the structure of shows like 24, but doesn’t have quite the same stakes. The Caller, a contractor and tech-savvy hacker, plays with Maia, manipulating her into doing his dirty work. Damian Lewis brings a calming, almost prescient demeanor as he guides her through her interactions on the city streets. Caller can hear what Maia is doing but cannot see her, so she tries every way she can to communicate with those around her while not breaking the rules that are the only thing keeping her son alive. As Maia traverses London, Gal Gadot runs and runs, facing countless obstacles, ranging from physical impediments to more complicated logistical nightmares. The majority of Gadot’s performance is delivered while the Wonder Woman actress is jogging or running full-out through each scene, requiring her to balance delivering emotional dialogue with sprinting across the screen. Gadot has always brought a more imposing physical presence than she may appear to have, and that is balanced by the emotional stress of Maia’s situation, allowing Gadot to dig into every facet of the challenge inherent in this story.
Because Gal Gadot follows a trajectory across the British capital city, every single scene in The Runner begins and ends in a different place, requiring a massive amount of coordination behind the scenes. Much like Franka Potente in Run Lola Run, you feel the exhaustion exuding from Gado as she drips sweat and blood through the brutal journey Maia takes. Run Lola Run had the added twist of going back like a Choose Your Own Adventure book and showing how alternate paths and decisions could alter the plot, but The Runner lacks that same kind of innovative approach. Instead, we are given an ending meant to blow us away with the intricacies that lead up to it, but it instead feels a bit bland and far too convenient. Maybe I am far too jaded after decades of twist endings (thanks, M. Night Shyamalan) or movies that actually catch you off guard to be surprised by where The Runner goes. Maybe it is the fact that anyone familiar with Damian Lewis will know the moment he starts speaking or when we get a glimpse of his eyes or mouth that makes the ending feel less shocking when all the threads come together.
Filmed in a claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio, director Kevin Macdonald tries to imbue Mark Gibson’s (Snow Dogs) screenplay with visual intensity, but it doesn’t live up to his previous acclaimed films, The Last King of Scotland or The Mauritanian. Macdonald has proven to be far more proficient at helming documentaries, such as the anxiety-inducing One Day in September or even the unique music-oriented One to One: John & Yoko, co-directed with Sam Rice-Edwards. Here, he doesn’t bring much to the screen that feels very cinematic, with the on-screen visuals of text messages or apps looking dated rather than innovative. There is a good use of music that helps maintain a rhythm reminiscent of going out for a jog, but when the movie shifts towards a more traditional action movie, it feels disingenuous and much more formulaic. Gal Gadot is a charming and likable lead actor, but when she is essentially the only actor of note on screen, it becomes more apparent that there are weak spots in the plot and structure of The Runner.
While the real-time element of the plot is used to varying degrees of success, The Runner ultimately stumbles and falls short of keeping pace through to the finish line. The first ten and final fifteen minutes of the film weaken what could have otherwise been a much more intense thriller. Damian Lewis is underutilized and could have made Caller into a much scarier antagonist. Gal Gadot goes all in, and her physical effort shows, but The Runner is just not as strong as it could be, especially when it falls into the familiar elements we have seen so many times before.
The Runner premieres on September 2 on Prime Video.
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