In the late forties and early fifties, Sir Carol Reed made a trilogy of films noirs all containing the word "man" in the title, "Odd Man Out", "The Third Man" and "The Man Between". When I recently caught "The Running Man" on television (there is no connection with the 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger film of that name) I wondered if it might be a belated fourth instalment in the trilogy, but although it deals with crime it is not made in the noir style, which was going out of fashion in 1963. (It was not wholly dead, however, at least in Britain, at this period; "The Spy Who Came In from the Cold" is a fine example from the following year).
The film opens at the memorial service for Rex Black, a pilot who has, apparently, recently died in a gliding accident. We soon discover, however, that Rex is still alive and that he faked his own death in order to claim £50,000 in life insurance money. Although no body has ever been found, the insurance company accept that Rex is dead and pay out the money without asking too many questions. Rex and his beautiful American wife Stella disappear to Málaga, Spain, where he lives under the assumed name of "Jim Jerome" (using the identity of an Australian tourist whose passport he has stolen) and Stella, using her real name, pretends to be his recently widowed girlfriend.
Things start to go wrong when a young man named Stephen Maddox arrives in Málaga. Rex and Stella recognise him as an employee of the insurance company who called at their home to discuss her claim with Stella. In fact, Stephen's presence in Málaga is coincidence- he no longer works for the company and is only in Spain on holiday from his new job- but Rex immediately suspects that the company have sent him out as an investigator. Rex asks Stella to try and find out how much Stephen knows, but things start to go even more wrong for Rex when Stella, who is tiring of her husband's domineering ways, starts to fall for the good-looking Stephen.
As I said above, this is not a film noir. The word "noir" is French for black, and such films were so called not merely because they tended to show the darker side of the human character but also because they were generally made in monochrome and featured a moody, expressionistic style of photography, with many scenes shot in darkness. "The Running Man", by contrast, is made in vivid colour; the scenes shot in Spain could be taken from a travelogue for the Spanish Tourist Board.
At one time the cinema took a highly moralistic attitude towards crime; there was a convention (in America made into an official requirement of the Production Code) that law-breakers were always to be portrayed as villainous and that their criminal enterprises should never be shown to succeed. The sixties, however, saw the rise of "heist movies", light-hearted dramas which could show the crooks as likeable rogues and by crime as an exciting caper. Admittedly, movies like "The Italian Job" and "The Biggest Bundle of Them All" ended with a twist of fate which thwarted the crooks' plans, but neither of these films ends with its protagonists behind bars.
"The Running Man" starts off like a film of this sort, portraying Rex and Stella as an attractive, personable young couple taking on The System, represented here by the insurance company, but then gradually becomes darker and darker, especially when Rex attempts to commit a crime far more serious than insurance fraud. The ending is, in moral terms, curiously ambiguous. Rex does indeed pay for his crimes, but Stella- who was a willing party to the original fraud- does not. The film ends with her free to keep her ill-gotten gains and to start a new life with her new lover Stephen. Perhaps screenwriter John Mortimer felt that attractive young women should enjoy a certain immunity from the moral laws that bind the male sex.
There are also a couple of plot holes; it is never explained why Rex is not arrested by the Spanish authorities as soon as the real Jim Jerome reports the theft of his passport to the police. Nor is it explained how Rex manages to enter Spain in the first place; he has not yet assumed Jerome's identity, but for obvious reasons would not be able to travel under his own name. (And if he has a forged passport in a third name, why didn't he continue using it?)
The acting is of a reasonable standard, but none of the three main stars, Laurence Harvey, Lee Remick and Alan Bates, were at their best. All three had already given better performances- Harvey in "The Good Die Young" and "The Manchurian Candidate", Remick in "Anatomy of a Murder" and Bates in "Whistle Down the Wind". The film makes for pleasant entertainment, but it is not in the same class as "The Third Man" (probably the greatest ever British noir) or "The Man Between" or even "Odd Man Out". I have always found this last film overrated, but it does have a commanding central performance from James Mason. "The Running Man" has nothing to compare with that. 6/10
The film opens at the memorial service for Rex Black, a pilot who has, apparently, recently died in a gliding accident. We soon discover, however, that Rex is still alive and that he faked his own death in order to claim £50,000 in life insurance money. Although no body has ever been found, the insurance company accept that Rex is dead and pay out the money without asking too many questions. Rex and his beautiful American wife Stella disappear to Málaga, Spain, where he lives under the assumed name of "Jim Jerome" (using the identity of an Australian tourist whose passport he has stolen) and Stella, using her real name, pretends to be his recently widowed girlfriend.
Things start to go wrong when a young man named Stephen Maddox arrives in Málaga. Rex and Stella recognise him as an employee of the insurance company who called at their home to discuss her claim with Stella. In fact, Stephen's presence in Málaga is coincidence- he no longer works for the company and is only in Spain on holiday from his new job- but Rex immediately suspects that the company have sent him out as an investigator. Rex asks Stella to try and find out how much Stephen knows, but things start to go even more wrong for Rex when Stella, who is tiring of her husband's domineering ways, starts to fall for the good-looking Stephen.
As I said above, this is not a film noir. The word "noir" is French for black, and such films were so called not merely because they tended to show the darker side of the human character but also because they were generally made in monochrome and featured a moody, expressionistic style of photography, with many scenes shot in darkness. "The Running Man", by contrast, is made in vivid colour; the scenes shot in Spain could be taken from a travelogue for the Spanish Tourist Board.
At one time the cinema took a highly moralistic attitude towards crime; there was a convention (in America made into an official requirement of the Production Code) that law-breakers were always to be portrayed as villainous and that their criminal enterprises should never be shown to succeed. The sixties, however, saw the rise of "heist movies", light-hearted dramas which could show the crooks as likeable rogues and by crime as an exciting caper. Admittedly, movies like "The Italian Job" and "The Biggest Bundle of Them All" ended with a twist of fate which thwarted the crooks' plans, but neither of these films ends with its protagonists behind bars.
"The Running Man" starts off like a film of this sort, portraying Rex and Stella as an attractive, personable young couple taking on The System, represented here by the insurance company, but then gradually becomes darker and darker, especially when Rex attempts to commit a crime far more serious than insurance fraud. The ending is, in moral terms, curiously ambiguous. Rex does indeed pay for his crimes, but Stella- who was a willing party to the original fraud- does not. The film ends with her free to keep her ill-gotten gains and to start a new life with her new lover Stephen. Perhaps screenwriter John Mortimer felt that attractive young women should enjoy a certain immunity from the moral laws that bind the male sex.
There are also a couple of plot holes; it is never explained why Rex is not arrested by the Spanish authorities as soon as the real Jim Jerome reports the theft of his passport to the police. Nor is it explained how Rex manages to enter Spain in the first place; he has not yet assumed Jerome's identity, but for obvious reasons would not be able to travel under his own name. (And if he has a forged passport in a third name, why didn't he continue using it?)
The acting is of a reasonable standard, but none of the three main stars, Laurence Harvey, Lee Remick and Alan Bates, were at their best. All three had already given better performances- Harvey in "The Good Die Young" and "The Manchurian Candidate", Remick in "Anatomy of a Murder" and Bates in "Whistle Down the Wind". The film makes for pleasant entertainment, but it is not in the same class as "The Third Man" (probably the greatest ever British noir) or "The Man Between" or even "Odd Man Out". I have always found this last film overrated, but it does have a commanding central performance from James Mason. "The Running Man" has nothing to compare with that. 6/10