The RUNNING MAN

   Film (1987). Taft Entertainment/Keith Barish Productions. Dir Paul Michael Glaser, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Richard Dawson. Screenplay Steven E. De Souza, based on The Running Man (1982) by Richard Bachman (Stephen KING). 101 mins. Colour.

   In a near-future, semi-totalitarian, economically crippled USA, a framed cop (Schwarzenegger) is forced to star in the top-rating tv game show TheRunning Man, in which "criminals" are tracked by tv cameras as they desperately attempt to escape theatrically dressed assassin-athletes. He turns the tables, violently, as the oppressed masses cheer. The criticism of MEDIA exploitation of violence and pain (game shows as the opiate of the downtrodden) strongly resembles that in Le PRIX DU DANGER (1983), based on Robert SHECKLEY's short story "The Prize of Peril" (1958). As usual when moralizing about the nasty possibilities of our desire for vicarious thrills, TRM exploits the very voyeurism it purports to attack. The SATIRE against the media is crude but well done; the comic-bookviolence is strictly routine; Schwarzenegger is wooden.

   PN