5 Gripping Movies Like The Runner to Watch Next

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As streaming platforms continue flooding the market with original films and series, action thrillers seem to arrive at a near-weekly pace — and that crowded field is where “The Runner” lands. Led by “Wonder Woman” star Gal Gadot, with Damian Lewis of “Homeland” and Alfred Enoch of “How to Get Away with Murder” and the Harry Potter movies in key supporting roles, the Kevin Macdonald-directed thriller works from a script by Mark Gibson and follows Maia Martin, a London-based prosecutor whose ordinary morning spirals into a nightmare. Maia is preparing to appear in court for a case tied to crime boss Tommy Boyd — a figure who remains unseen — when she drops off her young son Noah (Rory Wilmot) at school and heads out for a quick run. What should be a routine jog turns horrifying when a stranger, played by Lewis, calls to reveal that he and Boyd have arranged Noah’s abduction. Maia is given an impossible ultimatum: kill a crucial witness in Boyd’s case, or her son dies. With help from her colleague and romantic interest Ted (Enoch), Maia tears through London in a desperate, 84-minute race to save Noah’s life.

Despite its recognizable cast and tense premise, “The Runner” has struggled to win over critics. At the time of writing, the Gal Gadot action thriller holds a bleak 7% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with several major reviewers offering harsh assessments. Still, whether viewers find the film gripping or frustrating, its blend of high-stakes pursuit, kidnapping, moral pressure, and race-against-the-clock suspense connects it to a wider tradition of thrillers built around dangerous journeys. With that in mind, here are five movies that echo the energy, themes, or setup of “The Runner.”

The first of two Stephen King adaptations included here is Edgar Wright’s 2025 film “The Running Man,” a new take on King’s 1982 novel that also carries a connection to the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie inspired by the same source material. This version stars Glen Powell as Ben Richards, a desperate husband and father trying to survive in a dystopian United States ruled by an oppressive, secretive power structure known as the Network. Ben and his wife Sheila, played by “Sinners” breakout Jayme Lawson, are struggling to obtain vital medicine for their young daughter, a crisis made even worse by Ben’s inability to find steady work after being blacklisted for his pro-union past. Hoping to secure the life-changing prize of one billion dollars, Ben signs up for a brutal televised contest called the Running Man, where contestants must flee across the city while being hunted by snipers and bloodthirsty civilians eager to join the spectacle.

Ben’s audition is fueled by raw anger, and that volatility unexpectedly wins over the show’s charismatic host Bobby T, played with scene-stealing flair by Colman Domingo, as well as producer Daniel Killian, portrayed by Josh Brolin. Killian sweetens the deal by promising Ben that his family will be protected if he manages to win. As Ben proves himself inside the deadly game, however, Killian raises the stakes even further and offers him a place among the show’s ruthless “hunters.” “The Running Man” may not be flawless, but Powell brings grit and magnetism to one of Stephen King’s most defiant heroes. Beyond the obvious similarity in titles, the film’s relentless momentum, survival-driven premise, and desperate race against danger make it a natural companion to “The Runner.”

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.

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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.