You’ve likely encountered this story before. It echoes earlier movies like **NICK OF TIME**, **DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE**, **PHONE BOOTH**, **OUT OF TIME**, **RED EYE**, and even Netflix's **CARRY-ON** (2024) -- the point is, it’s a familiar setup. Movies such as **THE RUNNER** don’t emerge from nowhere. The approach seems to be effective, since director Kevin Macdonald’s film—smartly released directly on Amazon Prime—is already ranking among the platform's most popular titles. The movie follows Gal Gadot as Maia, a successful London lawyer whose child is taken and held for ransom by an unknown Caller (Damian Lewis), who demands she kill the key witness in a local mob case—a plot that seems increasingly unlikely the more you consider it. Even with the rapid-fire energy of **RUN LOLA RUN**, complete with numerous shots of Gal Gadot running through London landmarks, from St. Paul's to Canary Wharf, the idea of completing the London Marathon in 84 minutes is hard to accept. The seemingly all-knowing nature of Lewis’s character, easily manipulating technology to suit his purposes, is another tired plot device that just won’t go away. Despite how evil and carefully planned everything is on Lewis's part, it seems odd he doesn’t simply do the killing himself rather than forcing Gadot to participate in a series of absurd time-sensitive challenges amidst the activity of daytime London. Although Gadot does her best to portray the desperation of a mother trying to rescue her child, the film unfortunately highlights what appear to be limitations in her acting abilities, with uninspired dialogue and unnecessary explanations through conversation. As an action thriller meant to create suspense, **THE RUNNER** might entertain those who haven’t seen similar movies before. But for viewers familiar with this type of story, it's a predictable experience that won’t help Gadot’s career after **WONDER WOMAN**.

Source on TMDB