The Running Man

One of the best Schwarzenegger movies of all time.

How come the 80s/90s films are so much better than whats coming out today?

It's the running man. This is actually a screen play based on a novel by Stephen King under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. The quality of this version is very nice and you get a ton of old Arnie's one-liners.

The Running Man is a film based on a surprisingly good short story by Stephen King. King's tale, a sort of beefed-up '1984', has a man on the run not only from the law, but from a repressive society at large. It's gritty, gruesome, and so different from the film as to be nearly unrecognizable.The film itself is quite good, although it should be noted from the onset that it has a lot of truly agonizing mid-1980s styles and mannerisms. Some seem almost farcical, such as the earrings and female hairstyles, but if you can look beyond them you'll likely enjoy this film. In a nutshell, good ol' Arnie plays a cop (really a special police trooper) who refuses to fire on unarmed food rioters and is arrested. Society has been transformed into a totalitarian nightmare where the masses are controlled through the media and spoon-fed various gameshows such as 'Climbing for Dollars' where people try to avoid attack dogs and earn cash prizes, and of course the most popular, the Running Man. The Running Man itself is a gameshow in which fugitives are released into 200 square blocks (the "game zone") of burnt out LA and then chased around by stalkers as a live studio audience watches. You can probably see where this is going.Long story short, of course Arnie and his buddies end up in The Running Man show and are chased around by some colorful and entertaining stalkers. The film does a fairly good job of playing around with the underlying social commentaries of facism and media control (Robocop actually does a better job, and there are similar tongue-in-cheek remarks made in Starship Troopers). Stalkers are picked to chase our heroes by housewives who like them "big and cuddly," audience members are chosen a la The Price is Right to win extra prizes including "The Running Man Home Version" board game, and as Arnie smashes, bludgeons, mauls, and one-liners his way through the various stalkers sent to kill him, he gradually wins over the crowd, and manages to roll back the media control gripping the masses.The film isn't nearly as gritty as the novel, and often seems downright cartoonish, with stalkers effectively interchangeable with modern professional wrestlers (in a few cases literally, such as Jesse "Captain Freedom" Ventura, who does a hilarious turn as a retired champion tapped to do away with vexatious Ahnold and who refuses to wear pastic robot armor for the home audience). All in all the film is a guilty pleasure with its endlessly entertaining one-liners and is about on par with Total Recall for its production values. As Arnold pictures go, I think it loses out to classics such as Conan the Barbarian or Predator, but still deserves a place in your DVD library.

I like the movie and when I bought it the price was right. After seeing all the price jumps on Amazon offerings I couldn't say if I would still think it's a bargain or even worth it. That's up to you to decide forý yourself þ

Great dvd

good cult classic movie. plan to see the remake this november!

This is an essential Arnold (and Maria) movie. Richard Dawson also gives us a terrific alternate-universe version of himself. I (and I suspect others) like to view this movie and Total Recall back-to-back.You will likely have a pretty good idea of this movie's plot already, so aside from testing your memory on remembering the main satellite uplink's deactivation code, I'll add that this 4K version seems to make full-use of a 4K television's pixels. I don't have any older 1080i/1080p Blu-Ray version of this movie to compare, but I do still have my older DVD version to compare to, and there is no question of the higher quality video image. While my Sony UBP-X800 4K player provides excellent upscaling from DVD, playing this native 4K disc was noticeably better to my eyes, particularly in faster-moving action sequences such as when the rocket cart careens the 'contestants' down in to the 20 block game zone.I didn't really use any special features yet, but I should note that Paramount is currently including a free digital movie version to stream anywhere in this otherwise boxed disc (good until 5/23/2025). Read the terms, and note you will need a high-speed internet connection. I'm not sure if the movie can be loaded onto a tablet and watched later, say on an airplane, but it's a nice throw-in.I think the last two numbers were 17-4?? And now, I think I'll go to visit Mars, for...two weeks.