The Running Man

Rex's small airline goes bankrupt and the insurer refuses to pay. He devises a plan: he stages his death in a glider crash, his wife collects the insurance and the two meet in Spain. They build a comfortable life under a new name. Then a man appears at the hotel saying he is from the insurance company, and he does not leave. The subject is not the fraud but a wife recognising her husband in his new state. With the money Rex has become someone else: extravagant, arrogant and dangerous. The tension comes not from the investigator but from her not knowing which side she is on. The form is sunlit and wide. The Spanish coast, white hotels, cars. Carol Reed, who built his suspense on shadow and rubble before, moves it here into the opposite setting and constructs the threat in open air. The film belongs to his late period. He struggled through these years to sustain the reputation he built in the forties, and it drew no interest on release; it remains among his least-known work. Laurence Harvey plays Rex, Lee Remick his wife and Alan Bates the man at the hotel. Who it is for: viewers who like sixties British thrillers and narratives built as three-handers. Who it is not for: anyone expecting pace; the film slows noticeably in its middle.