Why walk when you can run? The second Stephen King adaptation about a contest to the death for a large cash prize has hit theaters this fall — Edgar Wright’s take on “The Running Man,” which was published in 1982 under King’s pen name Richard Bachman. Also included in the 1985 collection “The Bachman Books” is “The Long Walk,” about a group of teenage boys taking part in a televised walk or die competition. That grim film adaptation, directed by Francis Lawrence, of “The Hunger Games,” debuted in September, but hot on their heels comes our man on the run, breathless, brutal and bloody.

It’s in fact his second lap. In 1987, Paul Michael Glaser directed a version of this dystopian media satire starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, set in 2017, but Wright’s version, written with Michael Bacall, and set in 2025 (as the book is), hews much closer to the novel than Glaser’s film. A beefed-up Glen Powell plays Ben Richards, a desperate man who has been blacklisted from his job after informing a union rep about radiation exposure in his workplace, and now has no choice but to audition for a dangerous game show while trying to protect and provide for his wife (Jayme Lawson) and sick daughter, Cathy.

The most popular program of the state-run media, “The Running Man” TV show is produced by devious executive Killian (Josh Brolin) and hosted by smarmy showman Bobby T (Colman Domingo). The contest is a 30-day affair in which three contestants have to try to outrun, outlast and evade a team of murderous Hunters, led by the masked McCone (Lee Pace).

They become enemies of the state, with citizens encouraged to report any sightings, hunted on all sides while mailing videotapes every day. While his compatriots, the hedonistic Laughlin (Katy O’Brian, Powell’s former “Twisters” teammate) and hapless Jansky (Martin Herlihy) are obvious chum, Ben’s physical skills, honed on the job, and righteous anger, instilled in him by the injustices of the fascist authoritarian government the Network, make him an ideal candidate for “The Running Man.” Ben is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore.

Let’s be honest: it is deeply ironic that Wright’s “The Running Man” is among the first of Paramount’s high-profile film releases under the ownership of David Ellison, the scion of a tech billionaire who embraces right-wing politics and is seeking to create his own media monopoly, contemplating a purchase of Warner Bros. too. Wright and Bacall’s script is utterly savage in its critique of a fascist state media that turns broadcast bloodshed into propaganda in order to keep poor people at each other’s throats and away from the guillotine. The messaging isn’t subtle or even nuanced as it illustrates how these exploitative game shows disrupt class solidarity by villainizing participants, and that the other television offerings, like a Kardashians-style show called “The Americanos” is an opiate for the masses that only leaves them wanting more.

From storytelling to style, “The Running Man” delivers with a sledgehammer, not a scalpel. Both Wright and Powell are grittier, meaner, more unhinged than we’ve seen from a filmmaker and star known for their cheeky charm. At times it does feel as though both are posturing at toughness, teeth bared, but it’s fun to see them go just a little mad sometimes.

For Powell’s Ben, his motivations are rooted in family, which is more emotional than Schwarzenegger’s performance, and more suited to Powell’s natural screen abilities — he’s less murdering machine than Schwarzenegger, more (shockingly ripped) sad dad. Ben might be a little slow on his awakening about how he’s being manipulated in the game, but he figures it out soon enough.

Wright’s own agenda is made manifest with every helper that Ben finds along his journey — from an old friend (William H. Macy), who helps him gear up for the quest, to an underground activist in Boston, to a radical organizer in Maine (Michael Cera) — Wright makes an argument for the importance of physical media, an offline technology that doesn’t “watch you back” in the Network’s surveillance state, and for media literacy, to understand the video manipulation that the Network engages in to misrepresent the contestants on “The Running Man.” Their tools of liberation are public access TV shows, VHS tapes and photocopied zines.

Wright makes the argument that in such a dystopian, fascist state, there are only a few things that will save us: class solidarity, physical media and literacy. It’s a powerful and potent message that cuts through any and all of the bombastic busyness of “The Running Man.” The only question that remains is: has David Ellison watched the movie his studio is releasing? It could be vastly illuminating.

‘The Running Man’

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong violence, some gore, and language)

Running time: 2:13

How to watch: In theaters Nov. 14

Related Articles

Review: ‘Stumble,’ NBC’s cheerleader mockumentary, gives you something to root for

Movie review: Russell Crowe and Rami Malek face off in the Nazi trial drama ‘Nuremberg’

Movie review: Lynne Ramsay’s ‘Die My Love’ a primal scream of maternal rage

Diane Ladd, 3-time Oscar nominee, dies at 89

Movie review: ‘Anniversary’ a character study of creeping fascism

Amy Lindgren

Job searching can be challenging no matter what your circumstances may be, but those caring for aging parents have a double challenge. In addition to conducting the search itself, they must also identify employers and roles to support the delicate balance between work and caretaking – all while continuing to help their parents.

That’s a lot. Unfortunately for these individuals, more might be coming as we enter the holiday season. Professionals in geriatric services tell us that issues related to older family members will often surface during the holidays, particularly if those elders live on their own.

That’s when adult children may notice that their parents’ struggles go beyond needing a hand with medical appointments or financial matters. Suddenly, what sounded like fatigue on the phone may look like downright frailty in person. All at once, the question arises in whispered conversations, “Is Mom all right to stay here on her own?”

I’ve described this situation in columns from previous years, but with some of our safety nets in danger, the topic is sadly timely again. When government services and nonprofit budgets are curtailed, more elder care falls to the family. More specifically, those duties are likely to land partly or fully on family members who don’t have jobs.

If you are one of these unemployed caretakers, you may have mixed emotions about the situation. On the one hand, it’s good that you have the time to help your parents, but on the other hand, is it possible that doing so is hurting your prospects for finding a job?

Yes, it is possible. While adult children in this position often describe caretaking as a privilege, the process can still exact a heavy toll, particularly for an unemployed worker whose job search is affected.

Here are some of the effects on adult children when the issues of unemployment and elder care collide:

— Uncertainty in choosing a new career. If your parent needs help, should you really take work that requires travel, or extra hours? In some cases, saying no to these options means turning down career-building pathways in favor of work that is easier to flex.

— A sense of obligation to live and work near the parent. As things get more intense, it’s not uncommon for adult children to move closer or even share housing with their parents. This can close off some job opportunities that are site-specific.

— Difficulty staying focused. Gaining job search momentum can feel impossible when the day is punctuated with caretaking duties. Caretakers can feel more like on-call assistants than job seekers, and the productivity of the search reflects that reality.

The following tips may not be very comprehensive in light of such a complex situation, but if you are an adult caretaker who needs to complete a job search, they may help.

1. Don’t assume you’re the best or only person to help. Yes, you may be conveniently unemployed right now, but how is that a qualification? Ask yourself: If I were working full time, or living far away, how would I deal with this?

2. List all possible sources of help, including other family members. Too often, the sibling who is nearest – or the one without a job – is the one expected to step in. This person may even move in with the elderly parent, prompting other siblings to reason, “Well, free rent is a good exchange for helping Dad.” If this is happening to you, remember that you’ll get the most help if you ask for it.

3. Think realistically about your own limits. How many hours a week can you take away from job search? Or, how many hours is your personal limit? Once you have that number, focus on problem-solving to fill in the gaps in the care your parents need.

4. Consider dropping a job search altogether for now. Of course you can’t afford that. But if the effective result of not focusing on your search will be a year of unemployment, how is that different from deciding to step out for the year to focus on your parents?

That’s not meant to sound harsh, by the way, but to give you courage: You do have some control in this situation, little as it may seem. Remember that as much as you love your parents and want to help them, they love you too and don’t want to see you suffer from providing that help. Find the middle ground between doing nothing and doing everything, and you’ll likely survive this period with both your family and career intact.

Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.

Related Articles

Working Strategies: The things you need for networking post-60

Working Strategies: Job search outreach: Don’t call it ‘networking’

Working Strategies: Job search best practices require discipline

Working Strategies: Customize cover letters, but there are shortcuts

Working Strategies: Job search over 60: “purpose” vs. paycheck

Edward Lotterman

The movie “Network” is 50 years old, but the iconic sentiment, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” is common. Households and sole-proprietor businesses like farmers see price-fixing and similar collusion all around them. They are “mad as hell,” but it is up to Congress if they will “have to take it.”

Despite President Donald Trump’s assertions that grocery prices are down, the last consumer price index showed that “food eaten at home is up 1.6%” since he took office and 5.5% over a year earlier. Turkey is up 25% over the last year. “Meat, fish and poultry” is up 5.2% from a year ago, with 2.2% of that between Inauguration Day and September.

Ground beef, a mainstay for many, was up 11.5% over 12 months and 14% since January. No, that’s not a mistake. The price fell from September to January but then bounced back up. Thus many consumers are mad as hell.

So farmers also are angry. Despite Trump saying the Chinese had promised to buy 12 million tons of soybeans this year, none have moved. Yet prices of inputs for 2026, especially fertilizer, are high relative to prospective crop prices.

Beef is one bright sector. Slaughter cattle prices are near record highs. Breeding herds are recovering after shrinking numbers during a decade of drought. But operations fattening cattle say that the gap between what they receive from packing plants and what consumers pay is widening further.

Members of Congress from farm states listen to their constituents. There are hearings on why fertilizer prices are so high. Others question why meat packers, both for beef and pork, seem to have growing market power allowing them to grab a larger share of profits. Members of key committees are speaking out and introducing legislation to fix problems.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is a key one speaking up on both issues. With a farm background, he has represented Iowa in Congress for a half-century following 16 years in the Iowa Legislature. Thus, when he challenges monopolistic abuses that raise farm input costs and lower farm product prices, he speaks from some authority. But in his condemnations, he misses a key variable – what Congress has done in the decades Grassley himself has been in Washington. That is nearly nothing.

Grassley’s degrees, a B.A., M.A. and most of a Ph.D., all are in political science. So he probably never learned a key incident in Spanish history that fits him and his congressional colleagues to a tee.

Islamic Moors occupied Spain for centuries, but were driven out in the 1400s. In 1492, they gave up their last holdout, the city of Granada and its stunningly beautiful Alhambra palace. As the surrendering Moorish king rode away, he looked back and shed a tear at what was lost. His harsh mother was pitiless: “You do well to weep like a woman for what you would not defend like a man!”

That is precisely what Congress needs to hear now. Why stage great street theater about monopolies raising meat and fertilizer prices in 2025 when successive Congresses and presidents did nothing to stop their growth since the early 1980s? In 1980, the biggest four beef packers had 38% of the total market. By 2020, it was 82%. Yet history shows it is easier to prevent monopolies from being created than to break them up after they become entrenched.

Moreover, while both parties have blame, in recent decades the GOP has been far more cozy with monopoly power than the Democrats. This is a shame, given that antitrust was a central issue for the Republican Party before World War I. Teddy Roosevelt was the greatest “trust buster” of all time. After Abraham Lincoln, Teddy was the greatest GOP president ever. He dared to call out “malefactors of great wealth,” something no one in either party will do today.

To better understand all this, review some basic microeconomics.

“Perfect competition” has many small producers, none of whom have any power to set prices. Every seller is a price taker in a market with many buyers.

Monopoly is the opposite. There is only one producer who, facing no competition, sets prices wherever they want. They choose a quantity and price giving the greatest profit. That is visible to disadvantaged buyers right now, whether purchasing beef roasts or ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

Abusively high prices are not the only problem. The quantity of output produced is smaller than what is optimal for society as a whole. Resources are used inefficiently. Greater quantities of resources are used up to produce one unit of product than would be in a competitive market. Finally, monopolies foster less innovation. Without the stimulus of having to compete with other producers, there is little reason to look for ways to do things better.

Understand there are few real-world examples of perfect competition and few of pure monopoly. At the first end, there is “monopolistic competition” in which some but not all of the conditions for pure competition exist. At the other, there is oligopoly. Just as “oligarchy” is rule by a few people instead of one person in a monarchy, so oligopoly is a market with only a few producers who compete little.

Most large sectors – airliners, steel, automobiles, motor fuels, locomotives, chemicals – are oligopolies. So are meats and several other food categories. So are fertilizer, seeds and farm chemicals.

When there are only a few producers, the danger for society is that these combine, agreeing to conduct their business as if they jointly are a monopoly. Such collusion is what angry senators are investigating right now. It is what Teddy Roosevelt fought 120 years ago. It was the heart of the 1903 Northern Securities Co. decision from the Supreme Court that broke up a three-railroad “trust” put together by St. Paul’s own James J. Hill.

Curbing monopoly power long was important to Republicans. Richard Nixon saw it was time to break up the regulated monopolies in telecommunications. His Democratic successor, Jimmy Carter, did the same for airlines, railroads and trucking, reforms that were finished by Republican Ronald Reagan.

But that changed with the new century. Democrat Bill Clinton’s Justice Department saw anti-competitive practices by Microsoft. It filed suit to break Microsoft into two companies – one for operating systems and another for applications, just as Standard Oil and International Harvester had been broken up a century earlier. In 2000, the government was clearly winning the case in court, but as soon as George W. Bush was inaugurated, the case was dropped.

That was the turn of the tide of any GOP antitrust action. With the 2010 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court that legalized payoffs to politicians, anti-competitive collusion and price-fixing was given a free hand. Congress has stood by. They can hold all the hearings they want and pass all the bills calling for further study they want. But unless the president in the Oval Office and majorities in the House and Senate agree to promote competition, citizens should not expect much.

St. Paul economist and writer Edward Lotterman can be reached at stpaul@edlotterman.com.

Every once in a while I come across a passage in a book that hits me with the force of revelation. Here’s one: “A person’s way of being human is the most authentic expression of their belief or unbelief. A person’s life speaks more about their faith than what they think or say about God.”

That passage is from Tomas Halik’s book “The Afternoon of Christianity.” Halik is a Czech sociologist, priest and philosopher. When the Czech Republic was communist, he served in the underground church; after 1989, he was a close friend and adviser to Vaclav Havel and an admirer of Pope Francis. I like the passage because Halik is cutting through the categories we commonly use to define people.

That is a rarity. These days a pollster or a social scientist might call you up and ask some superficial questions and put you in a box like “believer” or a “none” (a person without belief). And somehow people are content to accept and live within these crude categories of separation.

Once you put people into categorical boxes, you are inviting them to see history as a zero-sum conflict between this group and that one. And sure enough, today we live in a political, cultural and religious war between two impoverished armies.

On the one side are the Christian nationalists, who practice a debauched form of their faith. Christian nationalism is particular rather than universal. It is about protecting “us” against “them” — the native versus the immigrant. It is about power more than love. It is about threat more than hope. It is rigid and pharisaical rather than personal and merciful.

On the other side are the exhausted remains of secular humanism. That humanism started out trying to liberate people from dogma, but it has produced societies in which people feel alienated, naked and alone. It has failed to formulate a shared moral order that might help people find meaning and solidarity in their lives. It is so enfeebled that it is being replaced by the religion of the phone — by shallow, technological modes of living.

A way out

When I read Halik’s passage I immediately glimpsed a way out of this stale and life-deforming culture war. That passage reminds us, first, that the categories in our heads are inadequate for the great diversity of human questing we see around us.

In my experience most believers have their periods of unbelief. Two people who call themselves evangelical Christians can think and behave in very different ways. Crude labels like “believer” or even “evangelical Christian” do not accurately summarize most real-life humans.

Meanwhile, the category “none” is itself an idiocy. How does this negation capture the lives of people who conduct their own spiritual adventures outside of a faith tradition? Most important, human beings have a lot in common that those categories don’t see.

Halik’s passage reminds us, second, of what matters most. To get a little preachy, it’s not the propositions that come out of our mouths but the care that flows from our hearts. It’s how we each try to fulfill the task of being human.

The passions of the heart

If there is one thing I have learned in my adult life it is that the passions of the heart precede and are greater than the machinery of reason. The theologian says that deep down each person possesses a yearning soul. The cognitive scientist says that deep down each person possesses unconscious layers from which desires flow, where 99.9% of our thinking gets done. Whether your language is spiritual or scientific, the bottom line is that the energy that animates the world emerges from the human depths, from the mysterious regions where passions form.

When you look at people only at the shallow level of their stated beliefs, you see ideologies that are likely to clash. But when you look down into the depths, you see struggling people in all camps, wrestling with impulsions they can barely control or understand.

Some of these impulsions are dark and destructive — hatred, resentment, the lust for power. But human beings are also oriented toward the good. All human beings seem to possess desires for greater understanding, belonging, meaning, beauty and love.

Theologians naturally describe these longings in religious terms. “Humans were created by God in God’s image and the desire for God was implanted in the structure of our humanity,” Halik writes. In his own book “Passions of the Soul,” the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes, “If we are growing in spiritual maturity and discernment, what we desire is always to go on growing and to go on desiring.”

Nonbelievers may use different language, but I believe most will recognize these spiritual longings. I have lived through decades of nonbelief and now more than a decade of belief. In both phases I ached, like most people, for a transformation of the heart — to gradually be a better person deep inside, to gradually be a better presence in the world. Coming to faith didn’t sate these longings; if anything, it has inflamed them.

Seen in this light, we’re not warriors clashing, we’re sojourners exploring. Each of us start with our own foundational truths — Christian, Jewish, rationalist, whatever. Each of us is swept along by the currents of our own traditions. But each of us longs to grow, to become better versions of ourselves. In the day-to-day realities of pluralist life, each of us stumbles and falls, and hopefully we help one another along our parallel and intertwining pilgrimages toward a horizon that we will never reach — at least in this world.

Pilgrimage metaphors instead

Which brings me to the third point inspired by that Halik passage. Today, we’ve been trained to think in battleground metaphors — believer versus nonbeliever, MAGA versus the wokesters. But if we’re going to get out of this nasty age of ours, we’re going to have to see the world through pilgrimage metaphors instead.

In the Book of Exodus, Moses asks to see God’s face, but God shows him only his back. Perhaps that’s because you don’t see the face of one you are following. The early church father Gregory of Nyssa argued that Christians are meant to attend Christ in exactly this way — to follow, to move in the direction of Jesus’ movement. Christian faith, Halik argues, is a journey toward and with Jesus, who said, “I am the way.”

You can choose to live your life in the trenches, going nowhere, and good luck with that. Culture warriors are static, and their certainties are terrifying. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert once observed that human beings are works in progress who think they are finished. But people who see themselves as pilgrims know they are unfinished; they know they are still on a journey that will change them. They embrace the dynamic, forward flowing nature of life. If they are clawing at anything, it’s not one another but the brambles that block their common path.

I got to meet Halik this past week at a conference sponsored by the Faith Angle Forum, which brings theologians together with journalists. I attended because I’m looking for a form of Christianity that is more attractive and compelling than Christian nationalism and which we can use to pry people away from that nationalism.

A better way to be faithful

Led by these wise people like Halik and Williams, I now see glimmers of a better way to be faithful in the world. St. Augustine advised us to follow what seems delightful, and in this pilgrim’s way of living I see the delight of pluralism. The world is too complicated to have all its truth encompassed by any single tradition — by Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Enlightenment. You can plant yourself in one and learn from them all.

I see the delight of self-forgetting. As so many sages have told us, if you dive down to the deepest realms of yourself, you find there a desire for self-transcendence that leads you to a highway straight out of self — toward loved ones and friends, toward God. You’re no longer trapped in your small, insecure, self-absorbed self; you’re outward facing, maybe not thinking about yourself much at all.

Related Articles

Bret Stephens: Meet the new antisemites, same as the old antisemites

Linda Hansen: Rebuilding civic trust in the age of algorithmic division

Allison Schrager: Cash is no longer king. It’s cringe

Parmy Olson: Mark Zuckerberg is picking groupthink over an AI godfather

Thomas Friedman: The post-Cold-War age is over. What is this new one?

I see delight in humility. I love Williams’ definition of humility as a “capacity to be a place where others find rest.” Williams adds that the people Jesus calls blessed “are those who live in welcoming stillness yet are at the same time on fire with longing for the well-being of the neighbor and the healing of the world’s hurts.”

I see, finally, a glimpse of the America I thought I knew. For centuries we have been a hopeful people, a people on the move, defined more by our future than our pasts. Sometimes this relentless passion for growth has led toward gaudy materialism and even exploitation. But American history has been at its best when the passion for spiritual and moral growth has been just as strong. When people have said: I want my heart constantly enlarged, my nation constantly moving toward fairness.

Somehow MAGA has swept in and made us a frightened nation, stagnant, callous and backward. I don’t think this alien cultural implant can last forever. Eventually Americans, restless as any people on Earth, will want to replace threat with hope and resume our national pilgrimage. When that cultural and spiritual shift occurs, a lot will change in our religious and political life.

David Brooks writes a column for the New York Times.