The Running Man (Aahhll be baahhck)

Many years ago I was on a school field trip and we had a long bus ride back home.  Thankfully it was one of those buses with television screens and video capability.  So we watched an old-school Arnold Schwarzenegger classic called "The Running Man" (even back then it was already an Arnold classic).

In the first scene of the movie, his character, a police officer named Ben Richards, is in a helicopter with some colleagues and there's an unruly crowd down below.  The other cops want to just gun them down and get it over with.  Apparently that's the way things are done in the dystopian future.  But Richards wants none of it.  He says "there are 1500 innocent people down there, it would be wrong to just kill them!"  Well, the other cops subdue him, knock him out, and then presumably gun down the unruly crowd to make them less unruly.

Well, Richards gets blamed for the massacre even though it was exactly what he had intended to prevent.  He tried to do the right thing in preventing the massacre and ended up getting blamed for causing it.  There was prison, escape from prison, then a recapture which led to being on a game show called "The Running Man" where criminals are given a chance to try to run free through some strange urban landscapes while being stalked by killers armed with flame throwers, buzzsaws, and electricity.

Richards initially did not want to be on the game show except that the host told him that his two prison friends he escaped with had also been recaptured and will be on the show unless Richards goes on instead.  Richards, wanting to save his friends from an almost certain gruesome death (prison is apparently a better way to go), agrees to go on the show only to find that his two prison friends are also on it.  Trying to do the right thing again, Richards puts himself in danger but to nobody's benefit.

Of course, the introductions of the contestants consist of the crimes they are charged with, whether real or not, as well as any other offenses they may have committed, such as cheating on university exams.  Just like the crimes, the other offenses may or may not be real.  So, once again, the massacre Richards tried to prevent gets blamed on him, and this time it gets announced to an already-hostile studio audience.

And so the story begins.  Ben Richards continues to take the high road when given the opportunity.  Of course, he takes people down too when necessary.  This is, after all, a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it.

John 10: 31-42