The Runner: Gal Gadot runs, clings to life and makes us drunk with noise (review)

The ex-DC star jogs like a headless chicken in this Prime Video thriller only to end up getting nowhere.

Since the health crisis, running is everywhere. All that was missing was a thriller to chase after him.

The Runner decides to transform this new passion which invades the streets into a galloping thriller. A mother, a lawyer by profession, runs all over London to save her kidnapped child, while conversing with her captor via Bluetooth and her bone conduction headset. On paper, it already seemed thin to go the distance. On screen, the concept runs out of steam before it has even finished tying its shoelaces.

Behind the camera, Kevin Macdonald – who once directed the acclaimed The Last King of Scotland (2006) – tackles the screenplay by Mark Gibson. A script which is content to knock down every cliché of the genre like hedges. Why make it complicated when you can make Gal Gadot run for 1h20? The problem is that a chase is not necessarily a thriller. And that running, even intensive, does not mechanically produce suspense.

In the genre, we had more fun seeing Taron Egerton running around an airport to Carry-On (2024), by Jaume Collet-Serra, on Netflix. It will also be better to find John McClane launched in A day in hell.

Because this runner runs out of steam as quickly as its heroine. As soon as we understood that we were going to run in circles behind Gal Gadot, the film no longer has much to offer. The ex Wonder Woman still has merit. She sweats profusely for this fundamentally demanding role. But Gadot is not really required beyond physical effort: running, suffering, getting the cardio pump up. She gives everything she can. The character, much less.

And Macdonald doesn’t help matters. His directing choices are questionable, sometimes corny, with a false rhythm that constantly confuses speed and tension. The Runner would like to make us run out of breath, but rushes like a headless chicken, leaving this persistent feeling that the suspense is never really there.

Until a climax which ends up derailing the whole thing. The ending is grotesque, with a twist so overwritten that it fails to surprise or convince. After his crazy race, The Runner leaves us completely bloodless.