utgard14
I was really enjoying this at first. The first fifteen or twenty minutes seemed a good set-up for a premise that sounds exciting and suspenseful. Then suddenly Laurence Harvey is walking around with dyed blonde hair and a terrible Aussie accent and the film derails itself from there. Literally nothing happens for over half an hour. Just characters going to dinner with each other and talking a lot about nothing. Carol Reed was a great director who has done much better but his attempts at building suspense between the insurance agent and the couple fell flat, in my opinion. I've seen a few reviews that referred to this as a "great cat and mouse thriller." Personally I think this is very misleading as it implies this is a movie full of action and intrigue when there's very little of either.The actors are fine, for the most part. Harvey's fake Australian accent is terrible and he tends to overact more than under. Alan Bates is good for a rather dull part. Lee Remick is beautiful and does OK with the material but her character makes choices we have to make guesses as to the reasoning behind and that sort of thing always bugs me. Anyway, check it out if you come across it. Your opinion might be more favorable than mine. It's not a bad film, just not a particularly good one.
brimon28
Who was first in this "suspense" genre? Was it Carol Reed or Alfred Hitchcock? In "Running Man" Carol Reed uses much the same formula as Hitch. Music? Yes, well. The bloke with a problem? Sure. The very pretty blonde? Of course. That was the James Bond movies, too. In the end, who cares? Get a good story - yes, it was a good story - and get a good cameraman, and you are home and hosed. So my bias is showing. An Australian cinematographer of renown, even an Aussie, John Meillon as the walk-on rich sheep farmer who loses his identity. A weak point that. Without a passport, how was he to travel? The accents. John Meillon's normal voice is educated Australian. What on earth persuaded him to adopt an exaggerated Ocker accent? I mean, rich Aussie sheep farmers, if anything, will often adopt a plummy "received" accent. And Laurence Harvey. Where were all the voice coaches? "Running Man" was a fair attempt at the suspense genre. But it did not ever have me on the edge of the seat. When I first saw it nearly 60 years ago, I was looking for the great camera work. I think one aerial sequence has been cut for the TV version. It was superb.
moonspinner55
A nosy British insurance investigator dogs a recently-widowed woman and her "boyfriend" in Spain; the couple is on the run after bilking the insurance company out of a fortune and don't know for certain whether their newly-acquired friend is onto them or not. Carol Reed-directed drama needed more paranoia-excitement or suspense. As it is, the three leads (Alan Bates, Lee Remick, and Laurence Harvey--looking impossibly skinny) are perpetually stuck in a fog, playing a tepid game of cat-and-mouse that seems fraught with errors (by the characters and the screenwriter). From Shelley Smith's book "The Ballad of the Running Man", and not helped by Reed's lack of grip on the narrative (he seems much more interested in the local Spanish flavor). ** from ****
Critical Eye UK
About as bad as any British movie can ever get -- and that's saying something -- 'The Running Man' is a 1933 opus with the wrong production date attached.Formulaic, pedestrian, and so Britishly twee, it's also notable for the screen's first display of acute anorexia (when Harvey strips off to go swimming in the sea.)But there is a reason to go to the trouble of seeing this movie, and it's this: 'The Running Man' is a perfect illustration of why the vogue for attributing everything in a movie to the director is, was, and always will be fallacious (blame the French: they're responsible for starting it all).Reed demonstrated his brilliance -- or so we are led to believe -- with The Third Man. Here, he demonstrates what an utter klutz he could be behind the camera.The fact is, when you have a superb Director of Photography, brilliant script, Grade A actors and a wonderful music score (as in The Third Man) then chances are, the film will a success.When you have none of that, and only the director to fall back on, chances are the film will be 'The Running Man'.Another IMDb entry meriting minus 10 out of 10, but for scoring purposes, an overly generous. . . 1.
AD
