Speed without direction: review deems Gal Gadot’s The Runner all motion, no payoff

Prime Video ’s new thriller wastes no time. Within minutes of The Runner, London lawyer Maia Marten (Gal Gadot) is yanked out of her morning jog by a stranger on the phone who says her young son Noah — who depends on insulin — will die if she doesn’t follow orders. The voice keeps her moving, block after block, turning the city into a high-stakes obstacle course.

Macdonald sketches Maia fast: she’s a single mom, decent at her job, her compassion surfacing in an early exchange with co-worker Ted ( Alfred Enoch). From there, the script piles on elements — old wounds, messy professional compromises, a kid in danger, and the creepier edges of our connected lives. The pace is breathless, but by the midpoint the caller’s motive goes fuzzy. Answers do arrive late, including why he targeted Maia, but they show up after the mystery has already been stretched thin.

The movie is streaming on Prime Video now.

Phones, watches and panic

The tech thread is everywhere — screens, calls, wearables, even medical devices feeding into the tension. Sometimes it ’s unnerving; other times it plays like a glossy ad for a very pricey smartwatch. There’s a pointed bit of irony, though, when all that connectivity largely fails Maia at the exact moment she needs to find her child. A needle drop of “Don’t Leave Me Hanging on the Telephone” is as on-the-nose as it sounds.

Shot at a sprint

Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle keeps the camera handheld and close, giving London a tight, restless feel that makes Maia look boxed in by the city itself. It’s energizing, but the geography blurs; the relentless motion starts to feel like cardio more than escalation.

When the movie eases off, sharper ideas peek through — a sunlit walk toward a gazebo in Temple that clashes with the tech-driven panic, and a later church sequence that holds back what Maia has confessed. Those quieter beats hint at a more probing thriller about guilt and truth underneath the chase.

Gadot throws herself into the role physically — running, climbing, scrambling, bargaining into a phone — but the script mostly pins her to shades of panic, and her accent drifts enough to distract. As the disembodied tormentor, Damian Lewis leans into theatrical menace, savoring the power imbalance even as his elaborate scheme starts to feel rickety. Enoch brings warmth to Ted, while Rory Wilmot turns up in support.

There’s a taut little thriller buried in here, and the short runtime keeps it from wearing out its welcome. Still, the movie often mistakes constant motion for mounting tension, leaving its best ideas about technology, motherhood and professional compromise scattered on the sidewalk. The Runner runs a lean 84 minutes. Rating: 5/10.