Runner Review: Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson’s Odd-Couple Charm Outruns a Formulaic Chase Thriller

Filmoria Review

Official poster © Angel Studios, via TMDB.

Quick Facts

• Director: Scott Waugh
• Cast: Alan Ritchson, Owen Wilson, Rodrigo Santoro, Leila George, Adriana Barraza, Sullivan Stapleton, Peta Sergeant, Geraldine Hakewill
• Studio: Angel Studios
• Runtime: 98 minutes
• Release Date: September 11, 2026
• Genre: Action, Comedy, Thriller
• Rotten Tomatoes: 70% at time of writing

A B-Movie Premise Played With A-List Commitment

The elevator pitch for Runner sounds like it was written on a napkin, and that’s honestly a compliment. Hank Malone (Alan Ritchson) is a former soldier turned delivery driver with one job: get a healthy, viable liver from a donor across the country to a critically ill young girl before the transplant window closes. Standing in his way are a pair of ruthless mercenaries working for a cartel figure, Damian Zaldívar (Rodrigo Santoro), who wants that organ for a buyer of his own. Along for the ride, whether Hank wants him there or not, is Ben Bishop (Owen Wilson), a civilian whose exact reasons for tagging along function mostly as an engine for comic bickering rather than plot necessity, and the film is smart enough to know that’s exactly what he’s there for.

Worth mentioning upfront: the screenplay, by Miles Hubley and Tommy White, has an interesting pedigree. It landed on the 2023 Black List, the annual survey of Hollywood’s most-liked unproduced scripts, well before Scott Waugh signed on to direct and Ritchson was cast as the lead. That pedigree shows up most clearly in the structure. This is a tightly engineered, scene-to-scene chase mechanism with a clear ticking clock, a clean villain, and just enough of a found-family arc between Hank and Ben to give the back half some emotional stakes beyond “will the cooler make it there in time.” What it doesn’t escape is genre gravity. Virtually every beat, from the mismatched-partners setup to the mid-film double-cross to the climactic hospital-set showdown, will feel instantly familiar to anyone who’s seen a chase thriller made in the last three decades.

What keeps that familiarity from sinking the film is, simply, Ritchson and Wilson. It’s an unusual pairing on paper: Ritchson, all coiled physicality and deadpan intensity since breaking out on Reacher, opposite Wilson’s laid-back, endlessly discursive comic persona, a dynamic he’s been refining since the early Wes Anderson days. The film leans hard into that mismatch rather than trying to smooth it over. Wilson gets to be the chatty, undisciplined civilian constantly testing Hank’s patience, while Ritchson plays against type just enough to land some genuinely funny deadpan reactions instead of just serving as the stoic straight man. Several critics have specifically called out the pair’s chemistry as the engine that makes the whole thing work, and it’s hard to disagree. There’s a lived-in, bickering-old-friends energy to their scenes that the script’s more mechanical plot points can’t match.

Director Scott Waugh, a former stuntman turned action specialist whose credits include Need for Speed and Act of Valor, brings real craft to the set pieces. The action here is clean and legible in a way a lot of modern action filmmaking isn’t. You can actually track who’s where and what’s at stake in a given fight or chase, which sounds like a low bar until you remember how many recent action films fail to clear it. A highway pursuit involving a refrigerated truck in the film’s midsection is a genuine highlight, staged with enough practical-feeling weight that the stakes register even though you know, on some level, exactly how it’s going to resolve.

The film’s weakest stretch, and one multiple reviewers have flagged, involves its hospital-set subplot: scenes centered on the sick child awaiting transplant and her family, meant to raise the emotional stakes of Hank’s mission. In practice, these interludes interrupt the film’s momentum more than they deepen it. They’re shot and written in a noticeably different register from the film’s breezy road-movie energy, and the tonal seam between “wisecracking buddy action movie” and “sincere sick-kid melodrama” never quite gets sanded smooth. It’s a solvable problem in theory. Plenty of action movies balance a ticking-clock human stake with comic momentum just fine. Here, though, it plays as a structural miscalculation, the sort of subplot that exists because the premise requires stakes rather than because the filmmakers found a way to make those stakes feel organic to the rest of the story.

Rodrigo Santoro, as the cartel figure pursuing the organ, is reliably watchable but underused. He’s got the screen presence for a much larger, nastier villain role than the script gives him, and most of his menace comes through the mercenaries he dispatches rather than direct confrontation with Hank. Leila George, playing the organ donor Hank is tasked with protecting, has a thinner role than her billing suggests, mostly there to be endangered rather than to drive the story. The real supporting standout is Adriana Barraza as Damian’s mother Donna, who gets a handful of scenes hinting at a more morally complicated family dynamic than the film ultimately has time to explore.

There’s a real-world footnote worth mentioning too: producer Dan Spilo was removed from the project following an HR investigation into alleged workplace misconduct during production. It’s not the kind of thing that shows up on screen, but it’s worth knowing about a film otherwise sold as breezy, crowd-pleasing counter-programming. A fun couple of hours at the movies doesn’t erase what happened behind the scenes to make it.

None of the film’s shortcomings — familiar plotting, a tonal wobble around its hospital scenes, an underused villain — are fatal, mostly because Runner never oversells what it’s trying to be. This is a modestly budgeted, star-chemistry-driven action-comedy content to hit its marks competently and let two engaging lead performances do the rest of the work. As RogerEbert.com contributor Peter Sobczynski put it, the film has “a certain weirdo charm that makes it far more watchable than it has any right to be,” and that’s about the size of it. It’s not built to be anyone’s favorite film of the year, but as a two-hour, popcorn-friendly hang with two performers clearly having fun together, it delivers exactly what it promises.

How It Compares to Other Buddy Action Movies This Year

Buddy action-comedies have had a quieter year than usual, which works in Runner‘s favor. There’s less competition for the specific pleasure this film is selling: two mismatched actors with real screen chemistry, a plot simple enough to follow with half your attention, and just enough genuine tension to keep the stakes from feeling weightless. Angel Studios has built a reputation on faith-adjacent and family-friendly counter-programming, and this is a slightly different lane for them. It’s not preachy or values-driven in any overt way, just a solidly mainstream action-comedy that happens to have landed at a studio known for something else. Whether that’s a one-off experiment or a sign of where the studio wants to expand next is worth watching. Either way, it’s a low-risk bet that pays off more often than it doesn’t, mostly on the strength of two actors who clearly like working together and a director who knows how to shoot a highway chase so you can actually follow it.

The Verdict

Runner is proof that a familiar chase-thriller skeleton can still be worth the price of admission when the right two actors are hung on its frame. Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson’s odd-couple energy papers over a formulaic plot and an uneven hospital subplot, resulting in a film that’s more fun in the moment than it has any real business being. Recommended as a fast, undemanding watch, especially for fans of either lead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Runner based on a true story or existing franchise?
No, it’s an original screenplay by Miles Hubley and Tommy White that appeared on the 2023 Black List of top unproduced scripts before being made into a film.

Who are the two lead actors in Runner?
Alan Ritchson plays Hank Malone, a former soldier turned delivery driver, and Owen Wilson plays Ben Bishop, the civilian who joins him on the road.

Is Runner a sequel or connected to Blade Runner?
No, despite the similar title, Runner is an unrelated, standalone original action-comedy with no connection to the Blade Runner franchise.

What is Runner’s Rotten Tomatoes score?
The film holds around 70% at time of writing, with critics largely praising the lead chemistry while flagging the formulaic plot.

Where was Runner filmed?
Principal photography took place in Australia, beginning in April 2025 and wrapping the following month.

Poster image courtesy of Angel Studios / TMDB, used for editorial review purposes.