When one prepares to watch a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, one might assume several things. First, that it will probably be an action-based film. Second, that a strong script is unlikely to be one of its characteristics. And third, that there will be a number of one-liners. All of these things are true for The Running Man; therefore, the first element (the action) is where it really needs to shine in order to succeed as a good, entertaining film. Reading the plot, one might expect this movie to fulfill that expectation, but it turns out to be purely bland. The Running Man coulda been a contender, but instead it is a generic action film with little imagination.

"By 2017 the world economy has collapsed," explains an intro scroll (we aren't told why). The United States government has basically turned into China, oppressing dissenters and covering up its actions on a regular basis. When Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a military helicopter pilot, is jailed for refusing to fire on an unarmed crowd of men, women, and children, he is sent to prison, then he escapes, and then he is put on the nation's most popular gameshow, The Running Man, along with a few fellow escapees. On this show criminals are forced to flee or fight the house gladiators, which usually succeed in killing their victims with little effort. They weren't expecting someone like this guy, though, and it is soon clear that their work is cut out for them.

With its setup, this movie was going to live or die by how entertaining the gladiators and their fights with Richards are. These characters range from mundane to weird to actually kinda awesome. The most ridiculous character is Dynamo, an overweight opera-singing electricity-killer in what looks like a bad homemade TRON suit and Spartan helmet. On the other end of the spectrum, there is Subzero, a sumo-samurai hockey-uniformed killer with a bladed stick. Now, that's pretty cool (no pun intended). So, the premise of the characters is dynamic (still no pun intended) and can provide a little entertainment, or at least the hopes for some.

What the movie does with the gladiators, however, completely undoes everything fun about them. The fights between Richards and the gladiators (he fights them one at a time), are boring. Take Buzzsaw, a big guy with a motorcycle and a chainsaw, for instance. That fight consists simply of Buzzsaw riding around swinging his chainsaw at Richards. Same with Dynamo. He just sits there and shoots electricity at him. The first fight, which is against Subzero, is the only semi-entertaining one of them all, and it's pretty short. Any potential the gladiators and their fights had is missed.

The chief villain in this movie, though, is not any character at all. It is the dialogue. Sometimes it's the line, and sometimes it's the delivery. At the beginning of the film, when Richards is ordered to fire on the crowd, he responds over the radio, "To Hell with you. I will not fire on helpless people," like he just learned to read. There is another line that actually makes me laugh out loud (do a sound clip search for this one): "I'll live to see you eat that contract, but I hope you leave enough room for my fist because I'm going to RAM IT INTO YOUR STOMACH!" You tell him, Arnold.

The dialogue also suffers from bad one-liners. Whether it's "Give you a lift?" while throwing a guy off an elevated walkway or "Howbout a light?" before setting someone ablaze, the writers take every chance they have to give Schwarzenegger's character supposedly witty comments that are both unoriginal and non-believable. They even make him say "I'll be back," his famous line from The Terminator three years before. Yeah, it gets pretty bad.

Finally, the characterization is simplistic throughout. This is a movie where the bad guys just do things to make them even more obviously the bad guys, and the main character is perfectly virtuous. There is no insight into any character's motives, and none of them do anything interesting. No character complexity or moral dilemmas whatsoever. It's okay if the action is boring, but in that case drama has to take over. You'll find neither of those here.

I have very few positive things to say about The Running Man. The best I can offer is this: with its premise, it could have been good. However, it is not. The action is derivative, the writing is second rate, and the depth is nonexistent. I can be nice about bad movies, but I gotta have something to work with.