Runner Is a Solid Dad Movie That Squanders Owen Wilson’s Comic Potential

Today I made some time to go to the theater with my Dad, and Runner seemed like just about the perfect movie for the occasion. Alan Ritchson, a race against the clock, bad guys with guns and a human organ that absolutely has to get from Point A to Point B. Sometimes you don’t need cinema to challenge your understanding of the human condition. Sometimes you want to sit next to your Dad and watch the enormous guy from Reacher beat the hell out of people for a good cause.

I was right.

Ritchson plays Hank Malone, a former soldier who now makes his living as a runner, transporting whatever needs to get wherever it’s going. His latest job puts him together with Ben Bishop, played by Owen Wilson, who is accompanying a donor liver desperately needed by a dying little girl. Unfortunately, a cartel wants the same organ, which means Hank suddenly has a cooler full of liver, Owen Wilson in the passenger seat, a ticking clock and a whole lot of people trying to kill him. Angel Studios describes the movie almost exactly that simply: a former soldier and his unlikely partner become cartel targets while trying to complete a critical medical delivery and save a little girl’s life.

Honestly, that’s part of its charm.

Runner is fast, violent, uncomplicated and built almost entirely around getting Ritchson from one increasingly ridiculous action sequence to the next. He’s good at this stuff because there’s something naturally likable underneath the ridiculous size of him. Hank is a gentle giant who doesn’t want trouble, which of course means the universe spends the next hour and a half giving him nothing but trouble. Ritchson can sell both sides of that character without much effort, and Reacher fans already know just how convincing he can be when the giant finally gets annoyed.

As far as Runner goes, what you see is pretty much what you get.

Except for Owen Wilson.

Wilson’s name is sitting right there beside Ritchson’s, and that immediately creates an expectation. You have the giant, mostly straight-faced action hero and then you put Owen Wilson next to him. Of course I’m expecting a buddy comedy. I’m not even inventing that expectation out of thin air. Angel itself lists Runner as an action, comedy and thriller.

Instead, Wilson spends a surprising amount of the movie playing the straight-man second banana who needs Ritchson to save him.

That’s not necessarily bad. Wilson is perfectly fine in the movie, and there are moments where his natural personality comes through, but this feels like such an obvious missed opportunity. Hank is already trying to deliver an organ before a child dies while being chased by armed criminals. Give him classic Owen Wilson sitting beside him, slowing him down, talking when nobody should be talking and saying increasingly ridiculous things while bullets are bouncing off the car.

That’s a movie.

Instead, Runner is much closer to an old-school Van Damme-style action picture that happens to have Owen Wilson in it. Peter Sobczynski at RogerEbert.com had a considerably warmer reaction to the pairing, writing in his September 11 review that Ritchson and Wilson have a “winning chemistry” that brings laughs and even some poignancy to the movie.

Come on, Hollywood.

I’m sitting in a theater with my own Dad. I’m about to watch a movie about two men risking their lives to get an organ to a dying child. And immediately beforehand, you’re selling me Owen Wilson as the lovable father desperately trying to reconnect with and protect his son.

Is the on-screen dad shortage really that bad?

Maybe none of that matters to another viewer, and that’s completely legitimate. It mattered to me. Movies are emotional experiences, and what an actor brings into the theater with them can affect whether those emotions actually land. In Runner, Wilson’s public image made some of the movie’s attempts at deeper feeling harder for me to buy.

That’s not a declaration about who Owen Wilson is as a person. It’s my reaction as the guy sitting in the seat.

And it’s unfortunate, because I still had a good time.

The action works. Ritchson works. The movie moves quickly, doesn’t overstay its welcome and understands exactly what kind of experience it’s delivering. My Dad and I got the guy-bonding afternoon I was hoping for, and there is absolutely something to be said for a movie that gives you exactly that without demanding anything more.

I just think there was a better version sitting right there.

If Runner had leaned harder into the absurdity of putting Owen Wilson next to Alan Ritchson, letting Wilson be genuinely funny while Ritchson desperately tried to keep this entire disaster moving forward, it could have separated itself from the mountain of perfectly competent action movies we already have. Instead, it’s exciting from beginning to end without ever becoming particularly memorable.

And that’s why I’m landing on PRETTY GOOD.

It’s fun. It works. I don’t regret buying the ticket, especially because I got to spend the afternoon watching it with my Dad. But Runner also feels exactly like the kind of movie that, six months from now, you’ll discover on streaming, press play and have an entirely enjoyable night wondering why anybody needed to leave the house for it.

KazooWatch Rating: PRETTY GOOD