Cert - 15, Run-time - 2 hours 13 minutes, Director - Edgar Wright

To afford a better life for his family, Ben Richard (Glen Powell) enters The Running Man, where he must survive a month while trained hunters and the world are after him.

Despite the title, The Running Man is far from Edgar Wright's most fast-paced film. It also seems to acknowledge when it's run out of steam.

Moving into a quick succession of sequences with the ending being a near montage, some may see it as a cop out, as the central chase nears its conclusion.

The chase in question is the titular Running Man. Where competitors must survive a month on the run across the country while trained hunters, and the public, are after them. If they survive they can win up to 1 billion new dollars - the currency in this near-future dystopia.

However, the longer he's on the run for the more Ben Richards (Glen Powell in a more serious-edged leading action role, still with his naturally playful humour) starts to see that there may be more to the behind-the-scenes of the show than viewers at home know.

It's this strand that sees the run-time pushed and the film lose some of its momentum. During more direct action sequences that lean into the central cat-and-mouse chase.

Two particular scenes set within various layers of two buildings - one seeing Powell improvise in the moment after a surprise appearance from the hunters, the other a series of entertaining traps courtesy of Michael Cera, both sees the camera tracking the fluid nature of the action with great pace.

Wright's trademark style of quick-cuts and snappy editing are certainly restrained here, although there are still some entertaining needle drops to back up the action. In fact, this feels like more of a studio affair than a full Wright feature, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The co-writer (alongside Michael Bacall, adapting Stephen King's novel) and director has been accused in the past of his weak writing for female characters. And while I don't entirely agree with that view, it certainly comes through here. Ben's wife (Jayme Lawrence) is largely unseen, despite the attempts to bring her into the plot to emotionally push the central figure.

Meanwhile, Emilia Jones appears later in the film as a hostage whose screen-time far exceeds the expectations her underwritten character initially suggests. It's these points, again, which mostly appear in the later stages when things start to acknowledge a lost sense of pace - before jumping into the raised tension of more up-front action scenes.

Yet, even as things start to wind in to setting up the conclusion there's no denying the push of Ben's fight for survival, held in part in Powell's natural charm and the Running Man viewers chants of Richards Lives! This is a wider-spanning actioner than the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger starrer that uses the open setting well, especially when at its most fluid.

Four stars