"You’re boring me, so apologise!" barks kidnapper (Damian Lewis) down the phone to on-the-hook lawyer Maia (Gal Gadot) partway through Kevin MacDonald’s Crank-alike thriller. Say what you like about what follows, it isn’t dull.
Ahead of a gangland murder trial, Maia is going for a morning jog through London. But then Lewis (known only as "The Caller") rings to say he is holding her son Noah (Rory Wilmot) – in a diabetic coma – and she has one hour to cross town and execute the star witness (Phoenix Di Sebastiani), or her child will die. The kicker? She must do so entirely on foot. It’s not called The Runner for nothing.
What follows is a frenetic, frequently silly, race against the clock. Like that bit in Dirty Harry where Clint is made to race from phone box to phone box by the killer, except Maia used to be a pentathlete (and Gadot used to be Wonder Woman) so she doesn’t tire quite as easily. Viewers, however, may feel differently.
Throughout his career, Macdonald has mixed documentary (Whitney, Marley, Touching the Void) and fiction (The Mauritanian, State of Play, The Last King of Scotland), often seeming happiest in the space between the two. What works best in The Runner is the way he packs in tiny, telling glimpses into the everyday existences of background characters as Maia races by.
Besides the commuters and tourists, buskers and beggars, we see kebab shop workers chopping meat, fashion shoots and school trips. The sense is of a sprawling – and, crucially, real – city filmed on the fly by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle.
Mantle is best known for his work with Danny Boyle (127 Hours, Slumdog Millionaire, T2 Trainspotting), and he captures the kineticism of capital life with similar verve. Indeed, some shots – especially one which shows Maia steaming through an empty Somerset House – seem to recall the pair’s astonishing opening to 28 Days Later (produced by Kevin’s brother, Andrew).
Full marks, too, for geographical accuracy. Maia’s challenge may seem impossible, but – unlike most movies – her journey plots a plausible route through the city’s landmarks.
Just because The Runner is a good London film, does not, sadly, make it a good film. The Caller gives Maia several rules she must follow – keep running, don’t talk to anyone and obey orders at all cost. Instead of sticking to the formula, however, Mark Gibson’s script repeatedly pulls her off track, only for The Caller to instantly forgive her. "Rules are made to be broken!" he reasons. Sure, but ransom demands aren’t.
View Green Video on the source websiteMaia is a double-hard heroine, running at full pelt for most of the 84-minute runtime, fighting off thieves and jumping out of a moving ambulance. But Gadot is not the most expressive of performers, and the character’s backstory feels, at best, tacked on, at worst, a little tacky.
But the biggest culprit is, also, the culprit. Lewis is a charismatic actor, yet his character is little more than a string of movie villain cliches, and some of his lines are downright terrible. "You’ve been running from your past, haven’t you?" he asks, while castigating Maia for her life choices, such as snapping sexy pictures ("Your digital hygiene is terrible!") and repeatedly ordering the same chicken ramen dish ("You’re stuck in a rut!"). Maybe, after a hard day’s lawyering, she just felt like chicken tonight?
As is often the case with such a high concept, it’s at the climax that the film plummets off a cliff, with an ending that aims for sleight of hand, but just feels like a cheat. It’s a pity because this should have been breathless good fun. At least it’s never boring.
The Runner is released on Prime Video on Wednesday 2 September.
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