★ (1 out of 4)
A streaming-only disaster like this should never happen to Wonder Woman. I’m talking about Gal Gadot being stuck in a thrill-free throwaway called “The Runner.” There’ll be another movie next week, in theaters, called just “Runner” with Alan (“Reacher”) Ritchson. Doctoral dissertations will surely be written about the differences, if anyone can stay awake long enough to read them. “The Runner” is first up to get a thumbs down.
Gadot plays Maia Marten, a legal wonder thriving in London as a single mother until her diabetic 8-year-old son Noah (Rory Wilmot) is abducted by someone known only as the Caller. That the role attracted an actor of the caliber of Damian Lewis (“Homeland,” “Billions,” “Wolf Hall”) is a mystery greater than the one in the movie. Until the end, the Caller is just a menacing voice and flash of eyes. If Lewis is lucky, audiences might forget he’s in it.
If someone asks you to watch ‘The Runner’ with them, go with a two-word answer: hard pass.
Caller helpfully texts Maia readings of her son’s glucose level to show how close he’s getting to death, which Caller will hasten with doses of insulin if she doesn’t do as told. Noah can be saved if Maia does one thing: murder the key witness (Phoenix Di Sebastiani) in the case she’s prosecuting against a crime boss accused of killing two women.
That there is not a scintilla of logic or reason in that request seems to not bother screenwriter Mark Gibson (“Snow Dogs”) or director Kevin Macdonald, who once guided Forest Whitaker to an Oscar in “The Last King of Scotland.”
Rest assured—there’s nothing in “The Runner” to inspire anything approaching awards talk. The gimmicks keep coming though. Maia has only one hour to get to the witness’s hotel where guards are visibly present, and do the deed. And for some reason she must run all the way, taking instructions from the Caller as she zigzags around London in a panic that Gadot seems unaware she’s supposed to be playing. She must be the calmest actress ever cast in the role of a woman in the midst of a total mental unraveling.
Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (“28 Years Later”) sticks sweaty close to Gadot as she zips through touristy streets that others casually take in. Oh, the irony. All becomes clear in the risible twist ending that is so hard to swallow you might choke on it. If someone asks you to watch “The Runner” with them, go with a two-word answer: hard pass.