- Director: Scott Waugh
- Screenplay: Miles Hubley, Tommy White
- Producer: Alan Ritchson, Todd Garner, Mark Fasano, Jeffrey Greenstein
- Cast: Alan Ritchson, Owen Wilson
- Cinematography: Lorenzo Senatore
- Editing: Matt Villa
- Score: Charlie Nguyen Kim
- Genre: Action comedy
- Runtime: 98 minutes
Not to be confused with Amazon Prime’s recent film, ‘The Runner‘, ‘Runner‘ follows a Navy Seal-turned-courier, Hank (Alan Ritchson). His latest mission: to transport a liver to a sick girl urgently in need of a transplant. The catch is, instead of receiving the box containing the organ on its own, he must escort Ben Bishop (Owen Wilson) along with it. Couriering a courier. A package deal.
It’s a package that won’t cease babbling. This riles the po-faced Hank, a man of solemnity. Their potential bromance has gotten off on the wrong foot. Ben is more irksome than the parrot in the backseat of Hank’s vehicle – a rejected article from the latter’s previous task. The odd couple are being tailed by a shady black SUV full of members of a Colombian cartel. The heinous lot are after the liver for themselves, given the donor has an extremely rare blood type. And to add to that, a looming deadline since the organ is only viable for transplantation for so long.
The movie is distributed by Angel Studios, a company known for their evangelical “values-based” content. There’s no preachiness or covert messages smuggled in as far as I could tell. Just an old-fashioned good-versus-evil escapade on wheels. It’s heavier on the action than the humour although it does raise some smirks. The fight sequences have a dizzying freneticism to them.
‘Runner”s plot is simplistic, travelling from point A to B to C without taking a detour. The ending is schmaltzy but it’s fully earned through bags of emotional character building. All in all, it’s better than what I expected it to be.
My rating: 7 / 10
