Bruised Knuckles, Bent Metal: Alan Ritchson Goes Full Reacher in the Disposable, Thrilling Runner

★★★☆☆

Dir. Scott Waugh | Starring: Alan Ritchson, Owen Wilson, Rodrigo Santoro, Leila George | Runtime: 98 mins

I went into Runner with rock-bottom expectations. On paper, Scott Waugh’s latest looked like a cookie-cutter direct-to-streaming cast-off: an improbable pairing of action-meathead and breezy comedian shoehorned into a cross-country dash against the clock. Yet, while it hardly rewrites the genre playbook, this oddball thriller manages to clear a low bar by sheer virtue of full-throttle momentum.

The plot centers on Hank Malone (Alan Ritchson), a taciturn, tank-like operative tasked with transporting a donor organ down the highway while evading a heavily armed syndicate. Stuck in the passenger seat is Ben Bishop (Owen Wilson), an eccentric medical escort whose drawling, low-stakes chatter contrasts sharply with the bullets whizzing through the windshield. Wilson does his usual relaxed riffing, while Ritchson leans even further into the hulking, monosyllabic archetype he perfected in Reacher—a persona he now wears as comfortably as an extra-large combat vest.

Where the film hits the brakes is in its narrative pacing. Waugh repeatedly cuts away from the tarmac to check in on the recipient's ward, saddling the story with melodramatic hospital scenes that often feel completely needless until they are clumsily maneuvered into place to justify the third-act climax. Similarly, the script spends a frustrating amount of time playing a half-baked whodunit, planting shifty glances to set up various side characters as the syndicate’s inside informant. When the mole is finally revealed, the payoff is so rushed and perfunctory you wonder why the subplot wasn't left on the cutting room floor.

Still, you don't buy a ticket to a Scott Waugh film for Agatha Christie-level plotting. You go for the kinetic wreckage, and here Runner punches well above its weight. Waugh’s stunt-performer roots shine through in a sequence of astonishing, crunching practical car rolls and bone-snapping close-quarters beatdowns that feel refreshingly tactile. It’s thoroughly forgettable once the credits roll, but as disposable Friday-night romps go, there’s plenty of fun in watching Ritchson smash through goons while Wilson murmurs a bewildered "wow."