Cody watches a new action thriller from Gravitas Ventures.
Back in 1987, producers George Linder and Tim Zinnemann worked with director Paul Michael Glaser and screenwriter Steven E. de Souza to take the bare bones of Stephen King’s novel The Running Man – which was published under the pen name Richard Bachman and was inspired by the game shows of the time, but predicted the rise of reality shows – into a big budget Arnold Schwarzenegger adventure that cast the action hero in the role of a man who is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and made to participate in a TV show where convicts fight for their lives against highly stylized killers, each with their own look and gimmick. The movie was almost nothing like the source material, but it was a lot of fun and has been a favorite of mine since I was kid. So it was cool to see that writer/director Brandon Slagle and producers Michael Mahal and Sonny Mahal (who also receive story credit) have made their own take on The Running Man with Arena Wars – which may not have a large budget or Arnie, but does make for an entertaining viewing experience.
The story takes place in the not-too-distant future of 2045, in a large city identified only as The Big Fucking City. A show called Arena Wars, hosted by characters played by Michael Madsen and Robert Donavan, drops convicts into a fight for their lives against highly stylized, homicidal gladiators. This show has been on the air for years... and the audience is dwindling. Is the public losing its bloodlust? We get to see a presentation of the latest episode and it’s a total disaster, with all ten prisoners being wiped out before they can even reach the first commercial break. It’s decided that what the show needs is a hero the audience can root for. The contestants are all Death Row inmates; a lot of viewers tune out as soon as they hear the contestants’ criminal records because they don’t care what’s going to happen to them. But if a contestant were believed to be innocent of the crime they were convicted of, people might keep watching to see if the person can survive and win their freedom.
The innocent man chosen to participate is Luke Bender (John Wells), a former Marine who got mixed up in a superior officer’s attempt to assassinate the President and took the fall to protect his mentor Admiral Jordan (Eric Roberts), who also happens to be the father of the love of his life. With explosives implanted in their heads to make sure they follow the rules, Bender and nine other convicts are sent into the Arena Wars set, where they’ll have to fight their way through seven different areas and get past seven different killers to survive and win. The budget restrictions show through in the simple design of the arenas the characters have to pass through, but the filmmakers did come up with some interesting, slasher-esque, gas mask-wearing killers for the convicts to face off with.
There’s the knife-wielding Hero; Counter-Strike, who has created a suit that harnesses his adrenaline and recycles it back to him; the axe-wielding Meat Wagon; Mister Smiles, who carries a spiked baseball bat; Calypso, who carries a pick axe and has killed seven dozen contestants; Cutie Pie, who has taken down 100 contestants with her machete; and Master Blaster, who carries a chainsaw. A big fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Evil Dead, I have always felt that the presence of a chainsaw automatically makes any genre film just a bit cooler, so I was glad to see that a chainsaw made its way into Arena Wars – especially since there were chainsaw-wielding killers in The Running Man and other similar movies like $la$her$ and Rob Zombie’s 31.
As the movie goes on, there is a bit too much talk about Arena Wars’ behind-the-scenes issues and the conspiracy Bender got wrapped up in, and the comedic relief character of Khan (played by Johnny Huang) was more annoying than amusing, as comedic relief characters often are, but when it comes time for the convicts to fight the killers, the brawls are good and brutal. By the time the end credits started rolling, I wouldn’t have been able to explain every layer of Bender’s back story to you, but I would be able to say that I had a good time watching the convicts vs. killers scenes.
So if you have about 95 minutes to kill some evening and are interested in seeing a lower budgeted take on The Running Man, give Arena Wars a look and see what you think. You might not end up liking or caring about the characters, but you might find, as I did, that the concept, the killers, and the fight scenes make it all worthwhile.
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