Video summary
The reviewer begins by clarifying that Amazon Prime's new film, *The Runner*, starring Gal Gadot, is distinct from an upcoming project featuring Alan Ritchson, though he expresses hope that both will be successful. After watching the movie, he delivers a blunt verdict: it was terrible. However, he argues that the film's greatest strength lies in its brevity; clocking in at just one hour and seventeen minutes, it feels like a short product rather than a rushed feature. The director intentionally shot the film in a 4 by 3 aspect ratio with black bars on the sides to force viewers out of their wide-screen comfort zones and into a claustrophobic experience. This stylistic choice, combined with soft-focus blur effects reminiscent of old adult videos, creates a frantic atmosphere where the audience feels they are wasting their entire life watching something that is essentially over before it begins.
The plot centers on Gal Gadot playing a high-powered attorney who has angered a mastermind villain by ruffling his feathers, resulting in her son being kidnapped. The antagonist uses advanced AI technology to trick her into believing she is hearing her own voice or communicating with her child, serving as a commentary on humanity's addiction to smartphones and the dangers of trusting technology blindly. To save her diabetic son, whose glucose levels are critically low, she must complete a series of impossible tasks within an hour, effectively turning the film into a high-stakes game show similar to *Die Hard* or *Speed*. The rules are simple yet absurd: she must never stop moving, avoid cars entirely, and constantly run while dodging obstacles. Despite breaking these rules repeatedly without facing any real consequences, the tension remains artificial, as the timer on screen counts down relentlessly, mocking the audience for having to sit through another thirty-five minutes of the ordeal.
The action sequences are described as surreal and physically impossible, featuring Gadot running with supernatural speed, jumping over benches like a skateboarder, and chasing trains while hopping along subway tracks without touching the ground. In one memorable scene on London Bridge, she jumps off a high structure onto a boat below, landing unharmed despite the significant drop. The film culminates in a twist where the entire kidnapping scenario is revealed to be a ruse orchestrated by Gadot's brilliant legal mind; she faked the murder of a key witness and manipulated the villain into thinking he had won while she actually called the police and set up a trap. The movie ends with her reuniting with her son and shooting the villain with a blank bullet, leaving the audience feeling cheated out of a massive climax that never truly materialized.
Ultimately, the reviewer concludes that *The Runner* is a piece of "shovelware" designed to keep streaming catalogs full rather than to entertain, yet it succeeds in being exactly what he expected and more because of its bizarre nature. He compares the experience of watching the film to "edging," where the music builds up to a massive climax that never arrives, leaving viewers in a state of perpetual anticipation. While acknowledging that few people will watch this movie due to its poor quality, he insists that it is a mind-numbingly insane piece of cinema that defies logic and comprehension. He ends by encouraging viewers to subscribe to his channel for more reviews and invites them to support his work on Patreon, jokingly noting that he needs to go take a run himself after discussing the film's themes of running so extensively.
Read the full video transcript
There's a brand new film on Amazon Prime
starring Gal Gadot called The Runner.
Not to be confused with Runner, which is
coming out in two more weeks with Alan
Ritchson. I'm sure they're both going to
be equally great. Well, I checked out
the movie a few hours ago and I'm happy
to report it's exactly what I thought it
was going to be. But you might be
thinking to yourself, "Adam, IS THIS
MOVIE A HELL YEAH or a cow L no?" Well,
you're going to have to watch the review
to find out. Right now.
It [ __ ] sucked. Okay, I kind of gave
away the game, but it it it sucked. Now,
what's amazing about this, I guess we're
calling it a film, I think it's more of
a product, is it's only an hour and 17
minutes of your time. Not even an hour
and 20. You couldn't make it to an hour
20. I understand 90 minutes is a long
time to try to sustain a movie of this
quality, but what's nice about the movie
is it's short. And what else is nice
about the movie is it doesn't feel
short. It feels like you are wasting
your entire life away watching it and
just, you know, a shave over an hour.
Filmed in glorious 4 by 3 aspect ratio,
the director demands your attention.
Now, this was a choice he made
intentionally. He said to himself, "I
want people pulled in. I want them
sucked in from their wide screen world
they're living in to this beautiful
gorgeous black barred son of a bitch."
And the reason we need to get up front
and center with Mrs. Gadot, whether you
like it or not, is because it's a
frantic film. Always moving, always
shaking and deaking and dodging. She's
on the run trying to save her little pup
who's been kidnapped by a villain. The
director wisely wants you to feel
claustrophobic and you are absolutely
going to feel that misery as you spend
what is essentially an eternity with the
acting that's on display by Gal Gadot
who is a one-woman army here. Not only
is she running her heart out, she's
acting it as well.
This statue of a woman who I would say
is the female equivalent of Tommy Wiseau
in term of acting is playing a
high-powered attorney who pissed off the
wrong individual. She ruffled the wrong
feathers. She shook the wrong bush. And
so now they have taken her kid hostage
unless she does them a favor. I say
them, but it's really just one
mastermind behind all this who has all
these tricks up his sleeve. Using the
power of AI, he can convince her that
her son's on the phone. He can make her
think that she's hearing her own voice
when in fact it's just technology. And
that's going to be a kind of a
commentary at play throughout this movie
is how awful technology is and how
people are addicted to their smartphones
and how they need to just get out and
touch grass.
It's powerful stuff.
No one's ever thought of this before,
especially in running format. So here's
what you're in for. This is the treat
you get to experience. Not only do we
have the black bars on the side with the
4 by 3 aspect ratio that made me take
off the TV and go to my computer to
confirm that was in fact a a choice they
made intentionally. It was.
Uh they also put like the soft focus
blur on it like you're watching an old
episode of Red Shoe Diaries in the
middle of the night hoping your dad
doesn't come downstairs and see you
jerking it under the blanket. That was
oddly specific and definitely not tied
to something I did as a child.
Subscribe. Armed with the shoes of the
gods aka Nikes and a playlist straight
from your mom's 1990s mix tape, our
femme fatale runs with the speed of a
gazelle, has the legs of a black-winged
stilt, and the ass of a charcuterie
board. Gal Gadot is
THE RUNNER.
AND
I'LL BE RUNNING.
I'LL be running till the love runs out.
Till the love runs out. Yeah, I'm
running
Baby, I was born to run.
Runner. Feel the runner.
Lightning and the runner. That's not
right. That's not how those lyrics go at
all. A lot of people don't know this
about runners, but they have a thing
called runner vision.
It's kind of a superpower. And this is
really shown in the film. It was an
eye-opener for me for the first time
watching it. Let me get out my brushes
and paint you something on the canvas
here that is this flick. We open with
Gadot taking a couple phone calls. She
kisses her little boy. The acting is
chef's kiss. And he goes off to school.
She's going to do her morning jog as she
always does to the office. She gets her
playlist going. She starts going her
merry way. AND THEN
YES, HELLO. Who is this? And then some
douchey British guy says, "I've got your
son, [ __ ] If you want to get him back,
you got to play a game, brah." This is
exactly He doesn't sound anything like
that, but
the the the the the story is here. It's
a Simon says situation from Die Hard 3.
It's a pop quiz, hotshot.
>> [laughter]
>> From Speed. Really, these are all the
same movie at the end of the day outside
of the fact that the runner is absolute
dog [ __ ] terrible and those movies are
amazing. He is going to demand that she
listen to his every single request. And
if he doesn't, that little kid that he
stole, he's going bye-bye. She wants to
see his kid again, too bad. He's going
bye-bye. So, she needs to get to him.
And so, some of the ground rules are
this and they are simple. Number one,
you got to always be moving. Kind of
like the bomb on the bus in Speed. Got
to keep that thunder cooking. And that's
not an expression. Number two, you
better sure as [ __ ] not get in a car.
All I'm thinking the whole time is why
not, dude? You call her an Uber, you get
over to the locash, you kill the guy,
and it's over. Locash short for
location, of course. Because that's
really at the end of the day what he
wants. He needs her to go to a location
at a hotel where a key witness is
staying, and she's got to
put some bullets in that [ __ ] And then
she gets her son back. But guess what?
On top of this, there is the simple
elegant fact that her son's going to die
unless in an hour. Skinting. Skinting.
Skinting. This is a 24 situation now,
friends. And that timer is going to be
on the clock constantly telling you how
much is left of this film. Those are my
favorite types of movies when it's
constantly reminding you, "Hey, you
still have to sit through 35 more
minutes of this. Enjoy the show,
jackass." The boy is, I believe,
diabetic and his glucose levels are
incredibly low. Uh we're running 30% or
something. I don't know. Maybe it's
gluten levels. I'm sure I can't remember
or care to to find out. So she needs to
get to him before he's dead. Time is of
the essence. And so she's going to do a
light jog through most of this movie.
"I'm going to get to MY SON. I WILL FIND
HIM." [laughter] SOME OF THE key
favorite scenes There I suppose there's
spoilers in this. Nobody's watching this
movie except for me. I'm I'm pretty sure
this is a tax write-off somehow. Right
out of the gates, within the first 20
minutes, we really set the table for
what's to come in terms of the action
moments. This is truly one of the
greatest action scenes I've ever seen in
my life put to cinema. She's jogging
down a dirt path, and she's got to keep
moving, right? Or consequences, except
for there's never consequences. She
breaks all these rules several times and
nothing happens. But she's jogging.
>> [laughter]
>> And there's a group of a gaggle of old
ladies in front of her and she's like,
"I could tell them to move, but using my
runner powers."
She zones in on the corner of a bench,
and then they show her hop up on the
bench,
tip the hat at the ladies as she's going
by, hop down on the other side.
This was seriously presented like it was
Tony Hawk pulling a 900 off. Just
insane. In another sequence, she is
trying to figure out how to get the
message to the cops. So, she starts
stealing phones from people, and then
the phones are locked, so she's like,
"Ah, [ __ ] it." Throws it in the water,
and the girl's like, "Bitch, why don't
YOU JUST GIVE IT BACK?" She's running on
other things, ruining everybody's day.
She's pushing bikers over. Sometimes I
think it's for no reason. She just gets
her kicks out of it. Anyway, she grabs a
phone finally.
She starts trying to text, and they're
showing the text coming up, and it's
like, "Blah, I can't I I can't
type." And she's erasing things and
trying again. And all I'm thinking is
just slow down for a second. Just slow
down. All the guy has to see and monitor
her from a distance is like a little
ping. He's watching her on a map. And
so, it's not like it's really going to
make much of a difference if she just
kind of like walks fast and does it. But
she can't figure it out, and then she
trips and the phone goes into the water.
And at this point, I'm like, "Just let
the kid die. Who cares? Just just just
die." We then get to the subway section
of the movie, where she goes onto a
subway, and it's now going like 15 mph
on the dude's pinging app.
He goes, "You're you're You're cheating,
aren't you? You're you're you're
cheating. I swear to God if you're
cheating,
I
>> [laughter]
>> And she goes, "I'm not cheating. I don't
I don't cheat." Cal L no. Remember
remember that? Nothing happens. There's
no consequences. She could have drove a
car to the hotel and would have had this
over in, you know, like toot sweet,
lickety-split. She gets her phone taken
by some local thugs. They show her
She's LIKE, "NO, I NEED THE PHONE, YOU
[ __ ] GOD!" THE SUBWAY TAKES OFF. SO,
now activating super powerful running
power, SHE STARTS GOING FAST.
AND SHE'S RUNNING UPSTAIRS,
jumping over things, moving out of the
way, and she somehow catches up to this
subway. The woman's like the Flash. She
kind of runs like him, too. The Ezra
Miller Flash.
And yeah, so she gets onto the subway,
and this is my favorite scene in the
movie. I've had several favorite scenes,
by the way. She's on the subway. There's
security in there. One guy is moving
towards her, and out of nowhere, he
stops and goes,
"Hit the brakes. HIT THE E-BRAKES."
WHY?
HE'S GOT HER CORNERED. And he decides,
in his
infinite
wisdom, TO SLAM THE BRAKES, causing
everybody to slam forward, and then
she's just like,
"Bye, fuckers." And she goes out the
back, and starts hopscotching on the
rails, cuz she doesn't want to touch the
the dirt or I I I don't I don't know,
cuz she could trip. So, she's like, "I'm
going on the I'm staying on the tracks."
It's like, don't touch the lava, the
floor is lava sort of a thing. And this
leads to favorite part number eight of
mine, where a subway starts coming at
her. A train is coming at her. She goes
up against the fence AND SHE'S LIKE
>> [screaming]
[laughter]
>> WAIT A MINUTE.
IT'S AWESOME. IT'S IT'S pure cinema. The
uh
crescendo of this whole fiasco ends on a
bridge, uh the London Bridge as a matter
of fact. It's an iconic location. So, of
course we we put it in this film. Uh the
the movie takes place in London if that
wasn't clear. She These are the things
you get from this channel. Subscribe.
She's on the bridge. She's surrounded by
people.
And she uh has to think fast cuz her
kids' life is hanging in the balance.
She's got to go shoot some dude so he
can't be the key witness to put some
mobsters in jail or something. Who
knows?
And so she jumps off OF THE BRIDGE.
AND SOMEHOW lands on a boat. It looked
like a long ass drop, but it did nothing
to affect her at all. Her legs still
work fine. Everything's intact. And
she's on her way again.
And so she finally gets to the hotel.
She goes up to the room on floor 50. Who
cares? She gets the gun. Kush kush kush.
She shoots the key witness and saves the
day. She gets her son back. But it turns
out Here's some spoilers. If we haven't
been in spoiler territory yet, we're in
spoilers now. For the one person that's
excited for The Runner,
it turns out this thing was all a ruse.
It was all a trick of the trade. She is
such a brilliant attorney. She knows how
to make people think things that aren't
actually real. I'd like to think that
she's an attorney only for criminals and
she's got an awful lot of bad people.
But that that's beside That's a story
for another day. Maybe for The Runner 2,
Cruise Control. She um
pretended to kill the guy because what
turns out actually happened is as she
was doing her runs, she was
she texted on a phone and gave it to a
stranger and And just like mhm mhm mhm.
The stranger got the note that he needed
to call the cops, tell them what was
going on as much as he knew, which was
basically just, you know, there's people
chasing me, my son's in danger. Then she
took a lipstick and
wrote out this perfect long-ass message
on a glass window as opposed to a wood
window, I guess, explaining what needs
to happen next, which is go to the
hotel, we're going to fake the murder of
my key witness. You're going to put some
blood packs on, you're going to put
blanks in a gun, you're going to store
that gun in the elevator, I'm going to
get that thing, pop in the blanks,
get my son back, and then the bad guy's
going to think mission accomplished. The
film ends with her going downstairs,
reuniting with her son, seeing the
villain who's dressed up as a paramedic.
He looks over, the son's like, "Mama,
that's the guy, Mama." And Gal Gadot
turns over, sees him, puts a little
crinkle in her face.
"You thought that I killed the guy, but
I did not kill the guy." And then he
looks up and he sees that the witness
has survived, and he looks back at Gal
Gadot who points her gun at him, boom,
and a blank fires, indicating that she
was 10 steps ahead of this piece of [ __ ]
the whole time, and he's just like,
"I got to give it to you. I got to hand
it to you. You got me. You really got
me."
And then they handcuff him and take him
away, and that's the movie. But it was
built up like there was going to be this
huge big final thing because there was,
you know, he had a contingency plan. He
showed that he had some Acme dynamite on
him the whole time that way he was going
to use, but he never used it. He never
used the Acme dynamite. It was just a
tease. It was a misdirect, and it was
brilliant because the music was building
up. It was pounding. It was
heart-throbby.
Like some huge thing was about to
happen, but then nothing happened. It's
perfect. It's my favorite kind of movie.
It's like edging. It's like getting to
that climax, but then never being able
to achieve it, which is now sadly the
only way I can achieve climax.
It's It's weird. I am a I'm a weird
person, and this was a weird movie. How
it exists is beyond words. I can't even
comprehend I can't fathom how this went
from paper to screenplay to
final product. It's It's just It's
mind-numbingly insane to me.
But that's where we're at in life.
Everything's just comes out. Nobody
remembers it in a day. There will be
like two people that defend the movie
and say I'm a a jackass, but let's be
honest. No one's watching The Runner.
Okay? This is shovelware. This is crap
they put out to, you know, keep the
catalog moving on these streaming
services. Oh, Netflix has The Last
House. Well, we have The Runner. And
then they're going to get the
construction guy, and then we're going
to get the horse. And then they're going
to get, you know, it just keeps going.
It's never-ending. And they get a big
name attached. They pay him a bunch of
money, and people foolishly think it's
going to be good. And then they don't
watch it, but I do. All right. There you
have it. The Runner with Gal Gadot. I
mean, you know, to be fair, it's
everything I thought it would be.
It really is. It's everything I thought
it would be and more. All right. Let me
know if you actually wasted your time
watching this. Please think of subbing
to the show Adam Does Movies. I'm on
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appreciate it. All right. Now, if you'll
excuse me,
I think I need to take a little run.
>> [laughter]
>> Oh, kill me. And I ran. I ran so far
away.
[ __ ] get away.
Thanks again for watching the video. If
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