Starring Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Colman Domingo, and Josh Brolin.

Directed by Edgar Wright

Paramount, out now

To help save his family, a man goes on the ultimate TV game show, his mission to last 30 days on the run.

Many reviews of this movie are keen to describe it as a remake of the 1987 Schwarzenegger star vehicle, and while both are based on the Stephen King/ Richard Bachman novel of the same name, Edgar Wright’s version should be judged in its own right. For starters, it follows the book a lot more closely, which I applaud it for doing.

Glen Powell is our hero Ben Richards, a very angry family man who is desperate to get drugs for his sick daughter, but has found himself blacklisted for work because he dared to speak out against lethal working conditions. Planning on getting a place on a more benign TV show, his audition shows that he has the right stuff to be a compelling contestant on the ultimate survival show, The Running Man.

Josh Brolin has fun as the corrupt head of the network, Colman Domingo hams it up as the host of the show, and even Sandra Dickinson turns up in what must be her biggest role in years – and she’s a hoot in this.

The main downside here is that we have seen all of this before. While Bachman/ King published the novel in 1982, we’ve since this sort of dystopian future in everything from Judge Dredd to The Hunger Games to Squid Games to King’s own The Long Walk, which only hit the screens in the last month. Powell holds his own in the action stakes, and Wright is no stranger to this sort of high energy material, and it’s all put together very well. It just washed over me in its familiar ‘been here, done that before’ way.

King movie fans will have fun in spotting character names like Spacek and Walken, and you can also drop in to establishments called Bachmans or Tabby’s Diner. And that’s all part of the enjoyment I guess.

Verdict: Bachman returns in a solid, futuristic action thriller that does what it sets out to do, but feels closer to the unnecessary remakes of Robocop and Total Recall than being a significant sci-fi classic. Passes the time nicely, but that’s about it. 6/10

Nick Joy