5 Movies To Watch If You Like The Runner

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With streaming services now firmly in the business of churning out original movies and TV shows, it seems like we get a new action movie every week — and that's where "The Runner" comes into play. With "Wonder Woman" star Gal Gadot in the lead role, Damian Lewis ("Homeland") and Alfred Enoch ("How to Get Away with Murder," the Harry Potter film franchise) in supporting parts, and Kevin Macdonald behind the camera as director with a screenplay from Mark Gibson, "The Runner" centers around Gadot's Maia Martin, a prosecutor living and working in London who finds herself in a bizarre and completely terrifying situation. Right as Maia is supposed to head to court to work on a trial against crime boss Tommy Boyd (who's never seen on screen) and drops her young son Noah (Rory Wilmot) at school before heading out for a brisk jog. That "relaxing" run is interrupted almost immediately, though, by a phone call from a mysterious man (Damian Lewis) who tells Maia that he and Boyd have orchestrated Noah's kidnapping. Maia must race against time to kill a vital witness against Boyd or her child will be killed. Aided by her colleague and love interest Ted (Enoch), Maia literally runs for Noah's life across London in this 84-minute thriller.

Unfortunately for Gadot, Lewis, Enoch, and Macdonald, "The Runner" wasn't particularly well-received; as of this writing, it has a measly 7% on Rotten Tomatoes and rough reviews from a handful of prominent film critics. With that said and whether you love or hate "The Runner," there are a handful of movies that either require long journeys, involve kidnapping, or just have a similar vibe to "The Runner" — here are five picks.

The first of two Stephen King adaptations on this list is the 2025 Edgar Wright film "The Running Man," which adapts King's 1982 novel (and, indirectly, the 1987 movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger that was also based on King's book) and casts Glen Powell in the leading role of Ben Richards. In a dystopian America where the country is controlled by a shadowy totalitarian cabal called the Network, Ben and his wife Sheila ("Sinners" standout Jayme Lawson) struggle to procure life-saving medication for their young daughter, made all the more difficult thanks to the fact that Ben is banned from most jobs due to his history of supporting unions. To try to win the enormous sum of one billion dollars, Ben enters a televised competition called the Running Man, which features contestants racing across the city and risking their lives in the process — thanks to snipers out to kill the players, as well as random citizens who just want to get in on the carnage — to win the grand prize.

When Ben auditions, his uninhibited rage and fury weirdly charms the show's host Bobby T (a ridiculously good Colman Domingo) and producer Daniel Killian (Josh Brolin), the latter of whom promises Ben a safe home for his family if he can pull off a win. Not only that, but as Ben plays the game and does it well, Killian ups the ante ... and offers him a job as one of the show's vicious "hunters." "The Running Man" isn't a perfect film by any means, but Powell is engaging and great as one of King's surliest and strongest heroes, and aside from the similar titles, you'll be able to see the overlap between "The Runner" and "The Running Man."

Here's the other Stephen King adaptation on this list, which also released in 2025 ... but takes a very different approach to extremely different material. Helmed by director Francis Lawrence (who spends the lion's share of his time making generally very good Hunger Games movies these days) and screenwriter JT Mollner, "The Long Walk" stars Cooper Hoffman and future "Black Panther 3" star David Jonsson as Ray Garraty and Peter "Pete" McVries, two boys who enter the titular competition for one wish and enough money to support them and their families for the rest of their lives. While "The Long Walk" has this in common with "The Running Man," there's definitely no running in "The Long Walk," in which a similarly dystopian version of America that's suffered through a civil war sees itself under the control of an oppressive military state and in which most citizens are going without basic necessities. Instead, Ray, Pete, and 48 other boys — one from each state — must endure the titular long walk. If they drop below 3 miles per hour at any point, they're shot and killed, and most of the boys there at the start of the walk die from other causes as Ray and Pete trudge on and do their best to keep each other strong.

This take on "The Long Walk" is a genuinely affecting and beautifully told one, letting Hoffman and Jonsson's pure talent shine as the two become unlikely allies and friends on a death march that lasts as long as they can possibly continue to walk. Ultimately, the scale of "The Long Walk" is less about building out the scale of this scary world and more about just showing the human cost of it, making every step of this staggering story compulsively watchable and utterly heartbreaking.

The movie that established Liam Neeson as a late-stage action star and let audiences know that he has a "particular set of skills" also happens to pair perfectly with "The Runner." Written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and directed by Pierre Morel, "Taken" casts Neeson — then better known for prestige dramas like "Schindler's List" and villain roles like Ra's al Ghul in "Batman Begins" — as a retired CIA operative and Green Beret veteran Bryan Mills, who's desperately trying to be a better father to his borderline estranged daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), who in turn lives with Bryan's ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her new husband Stuart (Xander Berkeley). When Kim asks permission from both of her parents to go on a vacation to Paris with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy), Lenore says yes, but Bryan is harder to convince; still, the girls go and meet up with a guy named Peter (Nicholas Giraud) who brings the girls to the home of Amanda's cousins.

Peter is not a good guy, though, and when Amanda reveals in passing that her cousins are away in Spain on vacation, he takes advantage of the situation and abducts both girls. During that famous phone call to Bryan where he promises to find and kill the kidnappers, Bryan is told "good luck," but as it turns out, he doesn't need it ... and he successfully finds Kim on the precipice of becoming a legitimate human trafficking victim, mowing down bad guys along the way. "Taken" is such a stone-cold classic that it ended up spawning its own franchise with its own sprawling narrative and timeline, and that's partly because Neeson is so good as an action star — but it's also because every parent knows they'd do all of that and more in the same situation.

Back in the 1950s, there was a television program called "The United States Steel Hour" that functioned as an anthology and produced hour-long standalone dramas, one of which was called "Fearful Decision" and aired in 1954. Two years later, a movie adapted from the episode titled "Ransom!" (yes, with the exclamation point) released with Glenn Ford, Donna Reed, and Leslie Nielsen, and 40 years after that, we got the 1996 version, "Ransom," directed by Ron Howard. so what's the story here?

Howard casts Mel Gibson as airline owner and millionaire Tom Mullen, who's busy with his wife Kate (Rene Russo) one day when their son Sean (Brawley Nolte) is kidnapped by a group of criminals that includes their caterer Maris Connors (Lili Taylor), tech whiz Miles Roberts (Evan Handler), and brothers Clark and Cubby Barnes (Liev Schreiber and Donnie Wahlberg) ... all of whom work for the corrupt New York City police officer Jimmy Shaker (Gary Sinise). Tom immediately contacts authorities and, with the help of FBI special agent Lonnie Hawkins (the incomparable Delroy Lindo), tries to track Sean down despite the $2 million ransom request, and the journey is frightening and intense from that point on.

"Ransom" isn't exactly the most original or acclaimed movie around, but it's definitely a spiritual predecessor to "The Runner" and boasts a pretty stacked cast to boot. If you want a good old-fashioned 1990s thriller, give "Ransom" a shot. Just be prepared for all of this movie's twists and turns; it goes to some pretty wild places across its two-hour run time.

If you like, say, "Ransom" or "Taken" but you're hoping for the political bent of "The Runner," the 1995 thriller "Nick of Time" will probably be perfect for you. Penned by Patrick Sheane Duncan and directed by John Badham, "Nick of Time" centers around Gene Watson (Johnny Depp), a regular accountant accompanying his daughter Lynn (Courtney Chase) to Union Station in Los Angeles before a trip. After Gene shoos away a guy hassling Lynn, criminals known only as Mr. Smith and Ms. Jones (Christopher Walken and Roma Maffia) tell the father and daughter that they're with the authorities and need to speak to them. After shoving the two into a van, the real gambit is revealed: Smith and Jones tell Gene that they need him to kill California governor Eleanor Grant (Marsha Mason), or they'll kill Lynn in a matter of hours.

Despite the fact that Gene keeps trying to figure out how to tell people about what's going on, he's able to get into one of Grant's events at the Bonaventure Hotel with little issue ... only to discover that many members of Grant's staff are part of the plot to kill her. Like "Ransom," "Nick of Time" is a pretty boilerplate and quite heightened 1990s thriller that, alongside Depp, Walken, and Maffia, features Charles S. Dutton, Gloria Reuben, and Yul Vasquez in supporting roles, but it's also a solid predecessor to "The Runner."

As for "The Runner" itself, it's streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.