As an Ohioan by upbringing, I always assumed that Midwesterners were the chattiest, friendliest folk in the land.
Until I moved to Texas.
Texans love to talk. Love it. They will chat you up anywhere, from discussing your career aspirations while at Target to dishing about your favorite place for margaritas while at the gynecologist.
It's inescapable, but it's kinda quaint, too.
Suffice it to say, even the most congenial northerners ain't got nothin' on the southern folks, y'all. The art of gab has been perfected in this neck of the prairie.
And now there are statistics to prove it.
A recent Nielsen study found that southerners are the most communicative lot in the United States, when examined purely by region. Texans average more than 800 minutes of telephone talk time per month, eclipsing other populous states like California, New York, and Illinois.
In contrast, Texas doesn't earn top honors for its text messaging affinity. My home state — and even Mississippians and Kansans, for pete's sake — whip our Texan hides raw with their zippy thumbs. Texans average a decent 500 to 600 texts per month, compared to the chart-topping texters of 600 or more in other states.
The results here, it seems, are as clear as day. You southerners still want to get down and cool the seats of your saddles.
Make no mistake about it: Texans love people. This state's got more guts than you can hang on a fence when it comes to personal relationships. It's what makes the merry go 'round.
And there ain't no need to be apologetic for that. Just don't let your mouth overload your tail.
For all its cheesy ‘80s greatness, the original version of The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was a very loose adaptation of the novel by Stephen King. For the new remake, writer/director Edgar Wright has tried to hue much closer to the story laid out in the book, a decision that has both its positive and negative aspects.
Glen Powell takes over for Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, a family man/hothead who can’t seem to hold a job in the dystopian America in which he lives. Desperate to take care of his family, he applies to be on one of the many game shows fed to the masses that promise riches in exchange for humiliation or worse. Thanks to his temper, Ben is chosen for the most popular one of all, The Running Man, in which contestants must survive 30 days while hunters, as well as the general population, track them down.
Given a 12-hour head start, Ben earns money for every day he survives, as well as every hunter he eliminates. Since he only has a relatively small amount of money to use as he pleases, Ben must rely on friendly citizens who are willing to put their own lives on the line to help him. That’s a task made even more difficult as the gamemakers, led by Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), use advanced AI to manipulate footage of Ben to make him seem like a guy for which no one should root.
Co-written by Michael Bacall, the film is shockingly uninteresting, working neither as an exciting action film, a fun quippy comedy, or social commentary. The biggest problem is that Wright seems to have no interest in developing any of his characters, starting with Ben. Our introduction to the protagonist is him trying to get his job back, a situation for which there is little context even after we’re beaten over the head with exposition.
The situation in which Ben finds himself should be easy to make sympathetic, but Wright and Bacall speed through scenes that might have emphasized that aspect in favor of ones that make the story less personal. The filmmakers really want to showcase the supposed antagonistic relationship between Ben and Dan (and the system which Dan represents), but all that effort results in little drama.
Ben has a number of close calls, and while those scenes are full of action and violence, almost every one of them feels emotionally inert, as if there was nothing at stake. It doesn’t help that Wright doesn’t set the scene well, making it unclear how far Ben has traveled or who/what he’s up against. There are times when Ben feels surrounded and others when he can walk freely, weird for a society that’s supposed to be under almost complete surveillance.
Powell has been touted as a movie star in the making for several years following his turn in Top Gun: Maverick, but he does little here to make that label stick. With no consistent co-star thanks to the structure of the story, he’s required to carry the film, and he just doesn’t have the juice that a true movie star is supposed to have. Nobody else is served well by the scattershot film, including normally reliable people like Brolin, Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, and Lee Pace.
The Running Man is a big misfire by Wright and a blow to Powell’s star power. On the surface, it has all the hallmarks of an action thriller with a side of social commentary, but nothing it does or says lands in any meaningful way. Schwarzenegger’s one-liners in the original film may have been goofy and over-the-top, but at least they made the movie memorable, which is way more than can be said of the remake.
