The Runner

Maia Marten (Gal Gadot) is a highly successful lawyer, living her dream life with her son Noah in North London. One fateful day, Maia finds her life turned upside down when her son is kidnapped by an enemy of one of her clients. Forced to obey a series of cryptic and dangerous commands from an unknown caller (Damian Lewis), she must overcome a series of hurdles across the city in a desperate race against time to save her son’s life.

As the title may suggest, Gal Gadot is indeed a runner and in this film, she is running, a lot. In fact, she pretty much doesn’t stop at all, not even when a small child is in her way or she is completely floored by a car. The premise is simple yet absurd; get from A to B within an hour, then murder someone, or else your child is going to die. What could be a high-stakes race against the clock is neutralised by what can only be described as a half-baked, half-hearted attempt at a script, and while Maia’s adrenaline is pumping, the viewer’s sadly is not.

Gadot has, unfairly or not, received a lot of criticism of her acting ability in recent years, but she does the best she can with the role and script presented to her. This is a very physically demanding role, and she gets the chance to showcase her extreme Wonder Woman athleticism as she charges around the streets of London, jumping barriers, dodging police and chasing tubes as she goes. But other than these artistic sequences, there is little else for the audience to cling on to. Almost all of Maia’s conversations take place using a cell phone, creating a physical wall between her and her manipulator, and subsequently resulting in a lack of charisma and chemistry for the viewer to engage with.

There’s nothing in this picture that has not been seen before, and most of what is witnessed is highly unbelievable and totally unserious; not the best combination when trying to make a film that is grounded in reality. There is a twist towards the end of the movie that tidies up a few glaring question marks over Maia’s actions, but while it is clever enough, it’s also completely unrealistic and unachievable.

Sometimes one has to wonder why films like The Runner are made. The bar for panic room movies is set so high by successful hits as Phone Booth and Buried that unless one is going to pull a masterpiece of a screenplay out of nowhere, there is no need to bother. Get it wrong, and one is entering into snorefest territory, and in this instance, it might be better to turn around and run the other way.

Guy Lambert

The Runner is released on Prime Video on 2^nd September 2026.

Watch the trailer for The Runner here: