Lamplight Drivel

Did the world need another adaptation of Stephen King's (er, Richard Bachman's) 1982 novel The Running Man?   Arnold Schwarzenegger lead the 1987 version, an entertaining, inconsequential wheel of gouda.  Decidedly campy.  Director Edgar Wright thought it was high time for a new imagining of this dystopian tale.  One that in many ways has become closer to reality.  Still, a dubious choice for someone who once dazzled movie nerds with deftly twisted genre pieces like  SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ .  Especially after his less than warmly received LAST NIGHT IN SOHO .  It just seemed lazy. The movie has intermittent energy.  Wright's skills with action scenes are still in evidence.  Really the only positive I can offer here. Sometime in the future the U.S.A. has been taken over by a television network.   A majority of the country suffers in squalor.  Their only possible ticket out is to be a contestant on one of the "...