The Runner review – Gal Gadot stumbles through derivative high-speed, low-rent thriller

We’re propelled on to an extremely familiar journey in Amazon’s quickie action thriller The Runner, both in reheated premise and strategic aim. The film is yet another example of a real-time assassination nightmare as an ordinary citizen is placed in an extraordinary situation, forced to do something terrible by someone terrible. Think Johnny Depp in Nick of Time, Rachel McAdams in Red Eye, Shia LaBeouf in Eagle Eye, or more recently, Taron Egerton in Carry-On and Meghann Fahy in Drop, with technology increasingly a key component. We’re also faced with what’s another strained attempt to turn Gal Gadot into a movie star, a mission that’s proved close to impossible after she broke out in Wonder Woman. Her streaming vehicles, like Red Notice and Heart of Stone, might have proved easy at-home hits (the latter was also surprisingly entertaining), but on the big screen, playing both a Disney villain and an Agatha Christie victim proved to be of little interest to audiences, who chose meme-ing her worst moments over turning up to see them.

An action-first film like The Runner, disposable and undemanding, might seem like the safest place for Gadot’s rather limited skill set, but even with a role that asks more of her physically than emotionally, it’s still a rather awkward stretch. Luckily, she’s paired with real on-the-ground London locations, from Kentish Town to Somerset House, the city proving to be a scene-stealing co-star. Gadot plays Maia, a single mother and lawyer, who says goodbye to her diabetic son at school and starts her run to work (surely her son’s diabetes will not become an important part of the plot, right?). But her day is soon interrupted by a nefarious “freelancer” working for a local crime boss, voiced by Damian Lewis. He has kidnapped her son and hacked his insulin dispenser, forcing him into a hypoglycemic coma, his life hanging in the balance until Maia agrees to murder a key witness she was supposed to be representing in court that morning. The film’s slight novelty is that Maia must run five miles to the hotel where he’s staying within an hour, no interruptions allowed. The slight 2026 update is that, in what’s increasingly becoming a lazy crutch for screenwriters, AI is an important weapon.

It’s all as hopelessly cut-and-paste as one would expect – lead character with relevant personal trauma revealed to us as if it’s a surprise, sinister voice on the phone saying allegedly creepy things like: “There’s more blood in the human body than you can fathom!”, teary “I can’t do this” waterworks hardening into an inevitable turn of the tables – and given just how effective Carry-On was at freshening up this formula, The Runner just feels that much lazier in comparison.

It’s directed by Kevin Macdonald, the Oscar-winning documentarian behind Touching the Void whose narrative films have included State of Play and the very enjoyable submarine thriller Black Sea. He tries to make it all as frenetic and involving as possible, maniacally hurtling his camera around the city as we run alongside Gadot, but rather than immersing us in the chaos of London, his dated flourishes take us back to the 2000s instead. The action is cheap and unexciting, and the more he tries to insist a sense of style upon the film, the worse it ends up looking, with a misjudged slow shutter speed effect that, when coupled with Gadot’s hapless histrionics, borders on laughable.

Her performance is once again athletically impressive (one believes she is actually running!) but entirely emotionally stiff and in essentially a one-woman showcase, with plentiful zoomed-in closeups, it crushes a film already limping its way to the finish line. The best version of this movie has us right there with her, agonising over what decisions she makes and nervously keeping an eye on the countdown clock but, crucially, Gadot just can’t get us on side enough to care about what happens. Mark Gibson’s script is far too plain, the rules of the game far too inconsistent and the dynamic between hero and villain far too generic (Carry-On found a fun mix of a boss/subordinate and dom/sub relationship to keep us involved) and an attempt at a smug switcheroo ending is far too clunky to prove as sneakily smart as those involved seem to think it is. Intelligence might not be what one would expect here, which is somewhat acceptable in B-movie territory such as this, but the lack of excitement is hard to forgive.

• The Runner is now available on Amazon Prime Video