Below Average
Summary
The Runner is as generic as it gets with little that makes it stand out in the overcrowded world of streaming. I liked the villain and it is quite tense at times but it’s mostly forgettable and bland.
Plot: A high-powered attorney must race through London to save her abducted son while following cryptic commands from a mysterious caller.
Review: With Alan Ritchson’s Runner coming out next week I figured I’d check out the similarly named The Runner starring Gal Gadot which just hit Prime.
It didn’t look all that interesting from the trailers and… it isn’t. I can understand why it went straight to streaming as it’s the kind of generic potboiler that we’ve seen so many times before.
Gal Gadot plays a lawyer whose son is kidnapped so she is forced to try and kill her star witness. So far so generic except the twist is… she runs… a lot. That’s what most of the movie is about, just her running around London following The Caller’s instructions.
Gadot clearly went through a lot of physical training for the role and she does give off the impression of a desperate mother who will stop at nothing to save her child. Her character Maia clearly has some daddy issues too which is mildly explored, but not especially interesting.
IMDb has this listed as an action movie which is why I watched it, but I think it’s more of a thriller as the only real action is Gal Gadot running and at one point she hits a thief with a gun. It still has a few moments of tension and I enjoyed the ending which although far fetched was entertaining; the hardest thing for me to swallow in this movie is how everyone seems to notice Maia running around the city. In reality no one would really care as we all stare into our devices unaware of our surroundings.
It’s the kind of movie that will be forgotten within a few weeks like most streaming fare and it’s not one I would return to.
Overall, The Runner does indeed have a lot of running and a few moments of tension, but it’s rarely exciting or all that engaging as we’ve seen it all before. There are worse ways to spend an evening as it is mostly well paced and short but there are many other, better films you could watch instead.