Director: Edgar Wright
Solid: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Tempo, Michael Cera, Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin
Score: ★★★★
Filmmaker Edgar Wright takes one other swing at dystopian spectacle together with his remake of The Operating Man, revisiting the world first imagined by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) and later became that wildly camp 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger car. This time, Glen Powell steps into the crosshairs, armed with Edgar’s pop-slick power and a narrative whose 2025 setting immediately doesn’t really feel like fiction anymore.
At its core, The Operating Man nonetheless follows Ben Richards, an on a regular basis American pushed to the brink by a corporate-run state. Unable to seek out work after talking up about unsafe circumstances and determined to afford medication for his younger daughter, he decides to enter “the most important present on earth,” a televised blood sport that turns human survival into prime-time leisure. It’s easy: keep alive for 30 days whereas a workforce of state-approved assassins hunts you. Win a billion {dollars}. Lose, and also you’re one other physique on the published.
Edgar retains the construction intact — the rigged system, the phoney propaganda, the slick studio host (performed with oily appeal by Colman Domingo) and the cold-eyed puppet grasp (Josh Brolin). The chase spills throughout a nation-sized enviornment, stitched collectively by rebels, punk manifestos and retro-tech that offers the movie its crackling, throwback flavour.
The great
Ed’s propulsion is unmistakable. The motion has that trademark sugar-rush rhythm — sharp cuts, needle-drops, breathless momentum. His retrofuturist touches (grainy TVs, VHS tapes, analog glitches) really feel each nostalgic and pointed, a reminder of how simply manipulated photos can turn into a weapon. Glen Powell throws himself into the physicality of all of it, channeling a Tom Cruise-like depth as Ben outruns Hunters, propaganda and his personal previous. And each time the movie leans into its satire — the frenzied studio viewers, the grotesque contestant bios, the Resistance popping up like pirate broadcasters — the world feels wickedly alive.
The dangerous
For all its fashion, the movie not often lands the intestine punch you anticipate from Stephen King’s most eerily prescient premise. Edgar’s irreverence typically jolts in opposition to the story’s bleakness — inequality, healthcare collapse, state surveillance — leaving scenes that really feel tonally cut up. The episodic midsection drifts, facet characters barely register, and Glen’s earnestness can’t at all times compensate for a personality written extra as a top level view than a totally realised everyman. Worst of all, the movie skirts its most troubling query — if every part could be AI-manipulated, what’s the purpose of the “actual” chase? — and its finale feels softened, even evasive.
The decision
It’s a brisk, punchy and constructed with plain craft. However beneath the adrenaline lies a movie that by no means absolutely confronts the nightmare it’s depicting. Wright is in stride, however not in full dash — delivering a dystopian experience that entertains constantly, but stops simply in need of turning into the razor-edged satire it needs to be.