Review of The Running Man (1987) by Josh C — 30 Nov 2009

After Schwarzenegger got to "da choppah" at the end of PREDATOR, he dropped off the useless Major General and the unrealized love-interest and flew into the future with a couple of his machine gun-wielding assholes.

Now, see, Arnold had never been to the future. Sure, he had spent a lot of time in the past as Conan from CONAN THE BARBARIAN and CONAN THE DESTROYER as well as the very un-Conanesque Kalidor from RED SONJA. Then there was the time he was HERCULES, and the time he was a gunfighter in the old west in THE VILLIAN. The rest of the time, Arnie was secure in the here-n-now. Even when he was THE TERMINATOR, he was still just a robot from the future in the present, and really had no definitive "future experience" to speak of.

So, Arnie flew into the future with a bunch of shady goons. And he took his time when he got there, leisurely flying around, observing how 2019 was a lot like 1987.

Suddenly, Arnie gets orders that there are a lot of people below and that he should kill them.

Now, Schwarzenegger ain't no goon. He don't kill people unless people are trying to kill him. Sure, he killed in THE TERMINATOR when he was a soulless robot. But, saving Alyssa Milano convinced him that not all children were whiny brats, and he tended to have more love scenes as the hero. So, Arnie said "to heil wid yoo" to the radio and tried to fly back to the present. Unfortunately, the goons liked shooting innocent people and hadn't discovered the glory of love scenes, so they overpowered Arnie and knocked him into Future Prison.

So, Arnie decided to grow a beard, just to let people know how long he had been there.

Future Prison isn't like normal prison. Normal prison consists of buildings with cells and iron bars and barbwire fences and general unpleasantness. Future Prison is a rickety steel mill in a rock quarry. Basically, you work at tearing apart the structure, recasting it, and putting it back together.

Schwarzenegger finds a good job carrying around heavy objects. That's where he meets Yaphet Kotto and a wormy white guy and they decide to shut-down the head-poppin' perimeter fence and head for greener pastures. There are gunshots, there are shouts, and in the end Arnie escapes and gets to hang out with Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa. Not a bad gig after bustin' out of Future Prison.

However, Arnold is not a rock fan, so he sets off on his own. He has a brother in the future that has promised to help him out, but got sent back to school instead. So, Arnie breaks into Amber Mendez's place by mistake, and once there recognizes her as the only female in the feature. For that reason, exclusively, he decides to take her with him to Hawaii where she will either throw up on his shirt or he'll break her neck like a chicken's.

In the meantime, the future has grown diabolical under the reign of Richard Dawson, former host of Family Feud. Having exhausted feuding families by 2019, Dawson instead schemes to feud convicts with weapon-themed steroid poppers in a reality TV show called, interestingly enough, The Running Man. Dawson likes the way Arnold runs, and rather than have him run back to the past in time to make RED HEAT, he would rather Arnie run around a demolished version of Los Angeles. Besides, Richard Dawson in the future knows that RED HEAT wasn't a particularly good movie, so he figures he's doing Schwarzenegger a favor. So, Dawson grabs up Arnie, Kotto and the wormy guy, shackles them to rocket propelled go-carts and shoots them down the tubes on national television.

By this point Arnold doesn't care for the future. He had to shave. His future brother is missing. He didn't get to go to Hawaii. And now he's in a sissy yellow and silver body-suit fighting weapon-themed steroid poppers around a bunch of busted concrete blocks. So far as Arnold is concerned, the future sucks. It looks a lot like his evil robot future, but Richard Dawson just drains all the fun out of it.

And then Jesse Ventura shows up, fresh from the set of PREDATOR.

Arnie has had it. He's been dodgin' razor blade hockey sticks, chainsaws, fire and a giant electric puss. And now former cast mates are showin' up in the future, takin' up Schwarzeneggers time. Arnie catches up to Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil, gets a load of machine guns, and then proceeds to rock like he should have rocked from the get-go.

Arnie leaves us with this quote about the future: "I'm not in tah politics, I'm in tah suhvival.".

Yet, after Arnold returned to the past, he ran for a different future . . .