'The Runner' Review: A Silly But Efficient Real-Time Thriller
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
By Dan Bremner - September 1, 2026
Full disclosure: I went into this expecting the Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson action film that is called Runner (which I assumed was an Amazon Original purely because… look at it). So I almost had a heart attack when the screener opened on Gal Gadot’s face and I realised it was this. It should genuinely be illegal to release two films with near-identical titles at the same time. As much as I try to keep an open mind, the sequence of words “An Amazon Original Film starring Gal Gadot” does absolutely nothing to raise my expectations. The only way this could have started lower for me is if Ryan Reynolds or Dwayne Johnson had somehow been involved.
Even with expectations that were already in the basement, I am a complete sucker for these gimmicky, race-against-the-clock, real-time thrillers. This one is essentially Run Lola Run meets Phone Booth: Gadot’s Maia is held hostage over the phone during her morning run by a psychopath (voiced by Damien Lewis) who forces her through a series of increasingly ridiculous tasks or her diabetic son dies. It’s fun in that very specific mid-2000s way, the kind of tight, high-concept, slightly stupid theatrical thriller we used to get regularly and don’t really anymore. The Runner is silly, dumb, and fully commits to its bare-bones premise in a ludicrously tight 84-minute runtime.
Much to my shock, Gal Gadot isn’t awful, but her usual clunky line delivery and slightly awkward attempts at emotion are still present even though she is clearly putting in more effort than usual. Damien Lewis, on the other hand, is a blast. He sounds like he’s having a wonderful time, gleefully mocking her, making her call strangers bitches for his own amusement, and carrying a sinister streak under the enjoyment. It's very much a two-actor show, and the dynamic between the two does keep the energy going as Lewis’s demands become more and more unreasonable.
The London location work is one of the film’s clear strengths. Shot on real streets with a restless, kinetic energy (Anthony Dod Mantle is behind the camera), it turns the city into a relentlessly crowded obstacle course and gives the constant movement a sense of urgency that a lot of these films lose when they stay on soundstages. There's almost a Crank-like style in the way the film never stops once it quickly gets going. Although, it was a little distracting as Gadot sprints through streets I recognise and walk through frequently (She should have taken a break and seen something in 35mm at The Prince Charles Cinema). The short runtime helps enormously, it gets in, does the concept, and gets out before the logic can completely collapse under its own weight. It really helps that this silly genre nonsense is helmed by a real director in Kevin McDonald, who is far above this sort of thing, so it gives it an unexpected boost in quality.
And the logic does collapse. The premise is highly derivative (Taken + Phone Booth + foot-powered Speed), and the film is incredibly dumb in places. The ending in particular, with its sudden pile-up of reveals about things the audience never saw, is unintentionally hilarious in how absurd and poorly covered it is. The smartest thing The Runner does is its understanding of how awful London is if you ever need to get somewhere in a hurry. The recent Jack Ryan film (Also by Amazon), failed miserably in portraying London how it really is, an overcrowded and claustrophobic mess that is a nightmare to navigate with its overpopulated foot and vehicle traffic.
The Runner is exactly what it appears to be: a silly, efficient, low-ambition real-time thriller that knows what it is, and quite literally, runs with it. I had a perfectly fun, undemanding time with it, which is more than I expected from the words “Amazon Original starring Gal Gadot.”
'The Runner' releases on Prime Video on September 2, 2026.
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