mackjay2 Sorely underrated and dismissed at the time of its release, THE RUNNING MAN can now be seen for what it it: a highly effective thriller. Director Carol Reed was said to be shaken after being dismissed from MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, but it really doesn't show. He conducts us deftly through a nicely conceived intrigue, with no time wasted. If a viewer can forgive a small handful of plot contrivances, this movie delivers in suspense, interesting characters, acting, and pleasing use of locations. The cast is superb: Laurence Harvey might look underfed, but his character is richly drawn he seems to have a great time. Lee Remick has never been better: a woman who sees her husband for what he really is when he assumes a new identity. And Alan Bates, an actor who radiated charm, brings a lot of substance to his part. Watch for Fernando Rey and Fortunio Bonanova (the singing teacher from CITIZEN KANE--"Impossible! Impossible!") as a bank manager. The script has a good helping of humor along with the suspense. And William Alwyn's music score enhances the film as well. It may not be THE THIRD MAN, but THE RUNNING MAN is likely to satisfy most fans of thrillers, the director and the estimable cast.

Rae Stabosz This movie had the misfortune of being released just around the time of JFK's assassination, where it got swallowed up in the general grief of the time. It did not do well at the box office, and one of its publicity stunts backfired when Dallas police saw personal ads in the newspaper signed by "Lee" and asking to meet up at an appointed place. The police thought it might be a Lee Harvey Oswald connection, not a Lee Remick stunt -- and spent some time chasing down this blind alley.I caught the film while flipping channels in the middle of the night and quite enjoyed it.Laurence Harvey plays an airline pilot/owner who loses out when a two-days' late insurance premium lets his insurance company deny his legitimate claim after he crashes his plane in the sea, narrowly escaping with his life. An honest guy with a love of risk-taking and a mutually reciprocated passion for his beautiful wife, Lee Remick, he decides to get back at the insurance company by faking his own death, with his wife's reluctant collusion. She hopes that this will get his anger out of his system and give them enough money to live comfortably, which seems to be why she goes along with the scheme. But at heart she just wants a quiet, comfortable life, an "ordinary life", she tells him. He, however, takes to life at the edges quite wonderfully, and pretty soon he's all about living the high life and risking their freedom with additional swindling schemes.Alan Bates plays the insurance investigator who comes round to the wife asking questions after her husband's "death". He has a whole Columbo thing going on, asking questions in an affable, bumbling way that always seems to indicate he knows more than he is letting on. He turns up again in Malaga, Spain, where the couple has gone with the insurance money to start their new life. Again, he's got the questions that could be innocent or could be a dogged inspector following his prey.Harvey decides that the best way to keep an eye on Bates is to invite him along to enjoy the Malaga sun and surf with the two of them. The three of them hang out together, swimming and eating and drinking and enjoying what Bates says is his vacation time and Harvey claims is a working vacation. Remick is supposed to be the new widow, technically single, who gravitates to the orbit of the Australian rich guy that Harvey is impersonating.At the movie's emotional core is, yes, a love triangle, as Lee Remick grows disenchanted with her husband's attraction to the James Bond lifestyle while discovering that Alan Bates likes museums and quiet walks, like she does, and seems to like her.So it's cat and mouse between the two guys on two levels -- over the insurance money and over the woman. The Malaga locations are glorious and reminded me of the villages in Romancing the Stone where Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas run across weddings, dancing, and general romantic danger.The movie doesn't take itself seriously, and the characters are conflicted in a way that you don't know what to hope for and what the final moral and romantic resolutions will be. Will the husband redeem himself? Will the wife stay true to him or fall in with the man who is on his tail? Harvey is not irredeemable and we do feel sympathy for him, and see that he is more oblivious to his wife's unhappiness than deliberately mean. He treats her as an extension of himself and just doesn't recognize that she has no interest in playing Bonnie to his Clyde.Good flick. Not great, but good.

moonspinner55 A nosy British insurance investigator dogs a recently-widowed woman and her "boyfriend" in Spain; the couple is on the run after bilking the insurance company out of a fortune and don't know for certain whether their newly-acquired friend is onto them or not. Carol Reed-directed drama needed more paranoia-excitement or suspense. As it is, the three leads (Alan Bates, Lee Remick, and Laurence Harvey--looking impossibly skinny) are perpetually stuck in a fog, playing a tepid game of cat-and-mouse that seems fraught with errors (by the characters and the screenwriter). From Shelley Smith's book "The Ballad of the Running Man", and not helped by Reed's lack of grip on the narrative (he seems much more interested in the local Spanish flavor). ** from ****

Critical Eye UK About as bad as any British movie can ever get -- and that's saying something -- 'The Running Man' is a 1933 opus with the wrong production date attached.Formulaic, pedestrian, and so Britishly twee, it's also notable for the screen's first display of acute anorexia (when Harvey strips off to go swimming in the sea.)But there is a reason to go to the trouble of seeing this movie, and it's this: 'The Running Man' is a perfect illustration of why the vogue for attributing everything in a movie to the director is, was, and always will be fallacious (blame the French: they're responsible for starting it all).Reed demonstrated his brilliance -- or so we are led to believe -- with The Third Man. Here, he demonstrates what an utter klutz he could be behind the camera.The fact is, when you have a superb Director of Photography, brilliant script, Grade A actors and a wonderful music score (as in The Third Man) then chances are, the film will a success.When you have none of that, and only the director to fall back on, chances are the film will be 'The Running Man'.Another IMDb entry meriting minus 10 out of 10, but for scoring purposes, an overly generous. . . 1.