It’s easy to see why everyone involved would have signed on for The Runner. These voice-on-phone thrillers have a very natural dramatic tension to them: a mysterious mastermind villain, a ticking clock, a protagonist who must creatively problem-solve on the fly. The premise practically sells itself. However, once the action actually starts, what seemed like such a dynamic set-up is actually quite difficult to keep interesting. Strip away the context, and what you’re actually watching in this Prime Video movie is a phone call and a jog – to make that cinematic, let alone exciting, requires a good deal of help. But the story’s promise is so clear that it’s virtually on rails, and the deviations that audiences will accept without feeling cheated are relatively limited. If a film isn’t willing to let itself become something else, á la Die Hard with a Vengeance, then every element needs to be handled just right. That doesn’t really happen here. The script is plotted well enough, but is neither rich nor witty enough for the characters to sustain our interest when things slow down. Star Gal Gadot, who handles the action capably, is not an engaging enough deliverer of dialogue to bridge the gap. And director Kevin Macdonald’s efforts to drum up excitement with a heavy dose of style only make The Runner come off as a poor imitation of a Danny Boyle movie. There’s some fun to be had, but not enough to make it memorable.
Though Intermittently Entertaining, The Runner Disappoints Where It Counts

London-based attorney and single mother Maia (Gadot) has a big day ahead of her. She’s one of those responsible for prosecuting a powerful crime boss for the killings of two women, and thanks to her star witness, who is set to testify today, these charges will actually be sticky enough to take him down. After seeing her son Noah (Rory Wilmot) off to school, she heads out on her morning jog to work brimming with confidence. Things shift when she answers a call from Noah and finds a stranger’s voice (Damian Lewis) on the other line. Her son has been taken and deliberately injected with too much insulin, enough to knock him out but not kill him. The fatal dose is being administered slowly, via IV drip. Without the counteracting shot that Maia always carries with her, he will die in about an hour – and the stranger will only reveal his location if, after following his instructions to the letter, she shoots and kills her star witness. This man is a professional, hired to ensure that the mobster Maia’s prosecuting never goes to jail. He’s hacked into her devices, knows everything there is to know about her, and can see her every move. She cannot talk to anyone but him; she cannot go to the police. She has no choice but to redirect her run along the path of his choosing to the hotel where her witness is being held in protective custody, and hope she can find a way to outsmart him before time runs out.

…for whatever reason, those stylistic flourishes do not often translate into feelings.

It’s a striking start, though not particularly original. 2024’s Carry-On had the benefit of significantly heightened stakes, and a willingness to lean into the ridiculous; 2025’s Drop let a different smartphone feature give its narrative a slightly different shape. Neither are great, but they are better versions of this kind of movie than The Runner, mostly because they put more of an effort toward playing with our expectations. This one mostly follows the path set out for it, even when it thinks it’s not.

Damien Lewis sitting in front of several screens in The Runner

Macdonald deserves credit for trying to keep the energy up with his aesthetic approach. The camera and edit move quickly when Maia is in distress, while soft focus, lens flaring and almost hyperreal colors try to tap into the perspective of a runner’s high. But, for whatever reason, those stylistic flourishes do not often translate into feelings. I was reminded of a film like Boyle’s 127 Hours, which faced even greater storytelling limitations and successfully overcame them; the way sound and image come together to represent pain has stuck with me. The Runner doesn’t have the grip on the viewer that would allow it to make a similar impact. That said, the film does have some success with specific set pieces as Maia encounters various problems. Some of them are third-act escalations that put a dangerous amount of strain on this premise, and may ultimately hurt the ending – but the one that works best, in which Maia has her phone stolen on a subway, suggests that the movie didn’t need to go as far as it does. The protagonist is presented with a challenge that fits the shape of the story, and is forced to push herself to her physical and emotional limit to face it. In this scene, everything clicks.

The Runner has too few of these moments. The dynamic between Maia and her son’s kidnapper needs to be intriguing enough to power us through the rest, but the characters aren’t complex enough on the page, and the actors don’t manage to create that complexity with their performances. Their routine exchanges lean heavily on Maia’s backstory, the deployment of which adds up to disappointingly little by the film’s end. It leaves The Runner a relatively weightless diversion that won’t live long beyond its runtime. The Runner is available to stream on Prime Video from Wednesday, September 2.

Release Date

September 2, 2026

Runtime

84 Minutes

Director

Kevin Macdonald

Writers

Mark Gibson

Producers

David Kosse