(2026 dir. Scott Waugh) Date Seen: September 22 2026
so if you wandered into this for its final 15mins (roughly from the moment the characters steal an ambulance), you’d be pardoned for assuming you’d missed one of the better action flicks of 2026. That segment contains the best stuff Scott Waugh's ever done: It's urgent, physical, & lucid + has a scruffy digitally stitched faux-"oner" that barrels along with a playful momentum the rest of the movie cried out for.
The trouble is there's another 80-odd minutes attached to that last chunk. I actually like the core ideas at the spine of RUNNER's script & general plot outline. Humanist & unfashionably earnest about its belief in sacrificing everything for the innocent & sick. It’s in the business of turning that sentiment into drama where everything goes to shite.
Whenever there's not action on screen it always devolves into Lifetime channel "Disease-of-the-Week" corniness. I really shouldn’t be holding back laughter during scenes involving a child facing death, but pathos ladled on that thick feels like parody. The musical scoring is funny bad & obvious too, but the classic rock covers on the soundtrack make that stuff sound tolerable. There’s also an early marketplace skirmish that's one of the ugliest action sequences I've personally witnessed. Shaky-cam deluxe & cuts that reduce everything to audiovisual mulch. You don’t experience this fight so much as understand that one seems to be happening somewhere inside the frame.
RUNNER has the additional misfortune of arriving in a year that’s already raised the cinematic action-movie bar so g.d. high *ONSLAUGHT*, *HOPE*, & *FURIOUS*?! So maybe it just looks shabby propped up next to those. (Which only makes its last fifteen minutes more frustrating & out of place).
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