Edgar Wright’s remake of “The Running Man,” based on the Stephen King novel about a game show where citizens are hunted by assassins on live TV, hits the ground running and rarely stops. The relentless pace generates enough of an endorphin rush to power the movie beyond plausibility nitpicking. It also prevents the audience from probing its worldview too closely, up to a point. That’s probably for the best. Although this adaptation of King’s book is dirtier and nastier than the 1987 film version, it’s not much more insightful about the nihilistic emptiness and cruelty of modern life. The more distance you get from it, the more it falls apart.

Glen Powell brings a surly, coiled energy to the lead role of Ben Richards. Ben lives in an apartment the size of a two-car garage with his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson of “Sinners”) and their baby daughter, who’s chronically ill but can’t get the care she needs because medicine is expensive and the wait for treatment is endless. Sheila works long hours at a sleazy joint that might be a brothel or a strip joint – the place is obliquely discussed but never seen — and is considering doing vaguely defined favors for the male clientele to make “tips.” She’s having to earn twice as much as she used to because her husband is unemployed, again. He’s been fired from multiple jobs for insubordination and anger management failures. 

Ben is not a criminal, although he’s about to be smeared as one. He’s a decent guy with a strong moral compass who Hulks out on behalf of those who are being bullied. Because what used to pass for a democracy has devolved into a corporate dictatorship that only believes in privilege and domination, Ben is angry every waking moment. His dreams aren’t much fun either.

Ben decides that the only way to raise the money to rescue his family is to get one of the many popular game shows that ask contestants to risk humiliation and injury for cash prizes. The only show Ben promised Sheila he wouldn’t audition for is the one with the largest payout: “The Running Man,” in which trios of “Runners” have to cheat death for thirty days while hiding within the general population. Hosted by a glamorous dandy named Bobby T (Colman Domingo), “The Running Man” is a rigged game that hasn’t had a winner yet. Drone cameras track the Runners’ progress while hired assassins known as “Hunters” try to kill them, and citizens collect money for ratting them out. (There’s an app for that.) 

The show’s creator and executive producer, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), thinks Ben has the stuff to be the first (permitted) winner because of his mercurial personality and opposition to the powers-that-be. At first, they portray him as the chiseled white male version of the “Welfare Queens” of 1980s American vernacular – a leech who didn’t appreciate his employers’ generosity, would rather take handouts than earn an honest living, and whose laziness is killing his baby. “He bit the hand that fed him,” Bobby T hollers, stoking the mob’s fury, “because that’s what dogs do!” Sheila is vilified as well. She and the baby have to be relocated so bloodthirsty viewers won’t murder her and the infant. 

Undaunted, Ben follows his gut instead of the tainted advice offered by Killian and patches into a secret network of mutual aid providers, including a guns and equipment dealer (William H. Macy), a pro-Runner podcaster (Daniel Ezra), and a gadgeteer (Michael Cera) who’s obsessed with avenging his father, a murdered dissident.

This is a rare case where you might emerge from the theater wishing the movie had been longer – or had at least slowed down more often to develop the characters. The supporting players that Ben meets on his bloody journey are all quite promising, and the actors playing them make a vivid impression from the instant you meet them. But the arcs they’ve been given are rushed through at such velocity that even the most potentially powerful moments don’t sink in. 

Ben could have been treated with more care, too. The character is a wisecracking, earthy, sarcastic borderline-antihero of a type that Bruce Willis might’ve played brilliantly a quarter-century ago. But he’s defined by two or three emotions at best, which gets tiresome. Powell’s good, but he’s got a long way to go before he can carry a wildly imperfect film on his shoulders.