The Runner

Good bad guys. That's not a typo, that's a compliment, and it's the thing this movie gets right that a lot of movies get wrong.

Alan Ritchson is at his best when he's swinging at the bad guys on behalf of the good guys, and that's exactly the lane he's in here. He keeps doing the tough good guy thing and I keep showing up for it. No notes. That's the job and he does the job.

Predictable and fun is a real category, and this sits comfortably in it.

His back story lands too, which surprised me a little. Usually that stuff is a speed bump you sit through on the way to the next fight. Here it actually adds something. It's a good back story, told well enough that I cared.

Owen Wilson is his usual self, just happier about it. And here's what I liked: he isn't the comic relief. He's not there to undercut the tension every four minutes with a punchline. He adds to the story instead. That's a harder ask than being funny and he pulls it off.

Back to the villains, because they're the secret weapon. They express enough evil that by the time things come around on them, you're leaning forward. You want them to get what they get. That's the whole trick with a movie like this, and when it works, the payoff hits. When the bad guys are a shrug, nothing else matters. These guys are not a shrug.

The worried mom worked for me, and her daughter is very cute, which sounds like a small thing but it isn't. You need to believe the stakes in your gut, not on a whiteboard. I believed them.

Is it predictable? Yeah. I could see most of it coming from a ways off. I don't care. Predictable and fun is a real category, and this sits comfortably in it. Knowing where the road goes doesn't ruin the ride if the ride is good, and this one is a fun ride from start to finish.

It was about what I expected, and the theater made it better. Bigger room, bigger sound, bigger reaction when the hits land. If you've got the option, take it.

I'd watch it again. I'd recommend it to just about anybody. And a couple days later I was still thinking about pieces of it, which is more than I can say for most of what I sit through.

Go see it in a theater.