I got to The Runner slightly later than a handful of other critics, so I had already watched its Rotten Tomatoes score rapidly plummet and seen most of the ire targeted specifically at Gal Gadot. She seems to be a fairly easy target nowadays. Her choice of films, her limitations as an actress, her thoughts on various topics—pick one. I’m sure there’s a reason why you or someone you know doesn’t like her. However, she is not the reason this movie fails. She is merely one piece in a catastrophic puzzle that Amazon has decided to thrust upon the world like a biohazard generated in a laboratory.
The problems with The Runner began at conception. Mark Gibson had to write this screenplay to get the ball rolling, and as soon as the first person read it, they should have handed it back with the words, “This is not a film,” and walked away. I can understand perseverance, and perhaps Gibson continued presenting the screenplay to person after person until he eventually found somebody desperate enough to say yes. That person then somehow secured financing, brought in director Kevin Macdonald, and found a casting director who thought, “Who would be perfect to run around London while talking nonstop on her phone for 84 minutes? Gal Gadot. Perfect. Let’s bring her in.”
For everyone spending their reviews discussing Gadot’s disastrous line readings and lack of human emotion or connection to anyone around her, you’re missing the forest for the trees. While she’s unable to do anything with this screenplay, there’s also nothing in it for anyone to do. Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Viola Davis, Meryl Streep, Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney—pick any Hollywood actress you want. Not one of them would have made The Runner good because its screenplay is deeply flawed and incompetent on practically every level. Macdonald is also responsible for translating that text to the screen, and he doesn’t do that in any meaningful way. He’s more focused on trying to be subversive with a boxy aspect ratio and keeping the camera tightly zoomed in on Gadot’s face, attempting to create claustrophobia in a film literally about running through open spaces across London. I suppose if you keep the camera tight enough on your actress, you don’t have to worry much about what’s around her.
Gadot plays Maia Marten, a high-powered London lawyer trying to get her diabetic son Noah, played by Rory Wilmot, off to school before taking her morning run. She also has a major case coming up, because there’s nothing like appearing in court while drenched in sweat from your daily jog. We barely get anything meaningful between Maia and Noah. He gets ready for school, makes sure he has enough insulin, ties his shoes, and heads out. We don’t learn what he likes, how he feels about his mother, or anything else that might establish him as a human being. Maia puts in her earbuds, speaks briefly with Ted, her coworker and friend with benefits played by Alfred Enoch, and starts running. Almost immediately, she receives a call from Noah’s phone. A mysterious man known only as the Caller, played by Damian Lewis, has kidnapped her son and will kill him unless Maia follows his instructions.
There will be spoilers from this point forward because discussing the complete stupidity of this screenplay requires connecting the dots so you can see exactly how awful it is. Noah is kidnapped within minutes of leaving home, yet the Caller somehow gets him all the way to a hotel room, sets up the equipment needed to monitor Maia, and settles in before calling her. Meanwhile, Maia needs approximately an hour to run to the same destination. I don’t know how the Caller and Noah got from Point A to Point B that quickly, but fuck it, right? Maia is ordered to keep running and eventually learns that she must kill Radian Tafa, played by Phoenix Di Sebastiani, the protected star witness in her case. This might be more impactful if we knew literally anything about the case. Instead, we gradually learn that some dangerous criminal is on trial for killing women, Tafa’s testimony could convict him, and only six people know where he’s being protected.
The Caller apparently has enough technological power to hack Maia’s bank account, monitor her running app, track her heart rate, access Ted’s computer, and look at the lingerie photos Maia has sent him. Because this is PG-13, that revelation has no bearing on anything that happens. The Caller also brings up Maia’s father being murdered, presumably by her mother, and suggests that Maia knows her mother was guilty or perhaps even helped her. This also has no bearing on anything. He questions why someone as pretty as Maia would raise a child alone through a sperm donor instead of finding herself a husband. These are supposedly the details that establish Maia as a human being. God forbid we talk about the trial at the center of the entire film. Gibson’s idea of character development is having Damian Lewis vomit random facts about Maia’s life that never connect to anything and receive no payoff.
She eventually encounters Ted again but never confronts him about keeping those lingerie photos. Instead, she’s grateful he’s there because she needs his help setting up the finale. There’s no meaningful payoff involving her mother, either. The best the screenplay can do with Noah not having a father is an idiotic proof-of-life call during which the boy, after being kidnapped and knowing the Caller for approximately five minutes, decides this man would make an excellent father. Well, Maia, your son is an idiot. We know he’s diabetic and apparently stupid, but perhaps we could learn something else about him. Does he like books? Does he have a favorite video game? Does he enjoy macaroni and cheese? Can we get sustainable character development instead of treating him like a walking insulin pump? People are so focused on Gadot’s poor line readings that they aren’t hearing what this screenplay actually asks the audience to accept.
As Maia runs across London, she leaves critically important messages with complete strangers, setting up her plan to shoot Tafa with blanks while using blood bags to make his death seem real. Because she suspects the Caller has universal access to every form of technology, nobody can communicate through phones or radios. She simply has to trust that all these random people will relay her messages accurately and that everything will be ready when she arrives. Somewhere, a London police station must be receiving calls from strangers saying, “Some woman handed me a phone on the Underground and told me to give you this message,” or, “A crazy lady wrote something in lipstick on my store window, and apparently I’m supposed to read it to you.” There’s an astonishing amount of faith placed in this plan working when it would be much easier to stop Maia and have the police search for wherever the Caller is holding Noah.
But that wouldn’t be as exciting as watching one person run across London, get hit by a car, jump from unfortunate heights onto a boat, and sustain no injury capable of preventing her from running again. Maia is basically the Terminator. Nothing stops her from reaching her destination, no matter how many times she probably should have twisted or broken an ankle. The only good thing I can say about The Runner is that it’s short. Even then, its twist ending isn’t particularly good because it’s ripped from something we’ve already seen. Maia gets Noah back, but the Caller escapes. Even though Noah was missing for only an hour, he now conveniently can’t remember anything that happened. He does need to pee, so the police inexplicably allow him back into the building they just evacuated. Through a glass door, Noah spots his kidnapper and wets himself, which is the exact same device Ron Howard used in Ransom. Fun fact. The screenwriter’s clever little twist isn’t even something he came up with himself. It’s an old cinematic shortcut for communicating childhood fear, regurgitated as part of the pile of shit Amazon has served us.
The audio description is functional but not great. It doesn’t do enough to communicate how the film is shot, so all those moments when we’re supposedly meant to feel tension from the camera zooming in on Gadot’s face are lost. We don’t get a meaningful understanding of the unusual aspect ratio, either. Maia navigates crowds with some sort of superhero running ability, always finding the perfect path while moving faster than everyone around her because I guess Usain Bolt just happened not to be in London that day. Very little of that comes through in the audio description. The track seems more interested in being flattering to a film that doesn’t deserve the favor.
There’s nothing here. Nothing to enjoy and no reason to watch. You would have more fun playing one of those infinite-runner games on your phone. The Runner is the kind of epic, abysmal failure, much like last year’s War of the Worlds, that people will remember as a cinematic disaster and one of the worst films of 2026. Hopefully, everyone will eventually recognize that this isn’t a singular assault committed by Gal Gadot. It’s death by a thousand incompetent paper cuts, delivered by a team collectively assembled to make the worst thing Amazon Prime Video has released this year.
Rotten: 1.5/10
