The Runner

Plot

Maia Marten is a prosecutor and mother to her diabetic son Noah, living in London. On the day she is scheduled to appear in court for the trial of crime boss Tommy Boyd, she drops Noah off at school, then goes for a run. While on her run, she receives a call coming from Noah's phone from an unnamed man in Boyd's employ. He informs her that he has kidnapped Noah, and orders her to follow his instructions to ensure his safe release. He also reveals that he has hacked her phone and is tracking her, leaving her unable to call or talk to others for help. The Caller guides Maia to a dumpster, where she finds Noah's backpack containing a gun that was used by Boyd. The Caller tells her that he has placed Noah in a diabetic coma using his insulin pump. He instructs Maia to run to the Excelsus Hotel, where key witness Radian Tafa is being kept under police guard, and use the gun to kill him, telling her that if she does not succeed within one hour, Noah will die.

Maia begins to run, still on the phone with the Caller, who taunts her with private information he has learned from hacking her, as well as her colleague and romantic interest Ted. Maia attempts to steal a phone from passersby to send a text to Ted, but is unable to do so. As the Caller interrogates Maia about her father's murder, allegedly committed by her abused mother, she is struck by a car, and awakens several minutes later in an ambulance. She leaps out and enters the London Underground to make up time, against the Caller's orders. While disembarking her train, she loses contact with the Caller, realizing her phone has been pickpocketed. Maia races the train to the next station and confronts the thief, threatening him with her gun, which attracts the attention of police and forces her to escape through an Underground tunnel. When she exits the Underground, she is confronted by police searching for her, but manages to escape, hiding in a nearby church.

Maia re-establishes contact with the Caller, who now plans to kill Tafa himself with a bomb. Maia tells him that she was the one who murdered her father, using a pistol she used for target shooting. The Caller gives her 15 minutes to get to the hotel and shoot Tafa. After being recognized by a policeman while crossing Waterloo Bridge, she leaps off the bridge onto a passing barge, then jumps from the ship onto a jetty near the HMS Belfast. She arrives at the hotel and heads to Tafa's 53rd-floor suite, where she shoots him several times as the Caller watches on. The Caller, who is several floors above at the hotel, pulls a fire alarm and departs. Maia reaches Noah and gives him a dose of glucagon to revive him.

In the lobby, Maia is met by a police detective, who informs her that the Caller is still nearby, but does not arrest her. Noah spots the Caller through a window, disguised as a paramedic, but Maia cannot reach him as the hotel is locked down. The Caller smugly confronts her, only to notice a still-living Tafa being escorted out by police. It is revealed that Maia used a stranger's phone on the Underground and her lipstick to send word to Ted and the police about the situation. The police arranged for Maia to be given blanks, and for Tafa's murder to be faked using blood packs. As Maia admits she is not a killer, she fires a blank at the Caller, alerting police to his location. The Caller accepts defeat as he is arrested and his bomb is defused. Boyd is convicted with the help of Tafa's testimony. As Maia and Noah are driven home, Maia receives a call from an unknown number, but tosses her phone out of the car instead of answering.

Cast

Gal Gadot as Maia Marten

Damian Lewis as The Caller

Alfred Enoch as Ted

Rory Wilmot as Noah Marten

Phoenix Di Sebastiani as Radian Tafa

Production

In November 2024, Amazon MGM Studios was developing an action thriller film titled The Runner with Kevin Macdonald directing, Mark Gibson writing the script, and Gal Gadot starring. Principal photography began on 22 April 2025, in London and wrapped filming around early July 2025.

Through April and May 2025, eight pro-Palestinian protesters in total were arrested for disrupting the Central London set of the film. The Metropolitan Police stated in a news release that the demonstrations were “solely because an actress involved in the production is Israeli." In November 2025, the case was discontinued and all charges against the protesters were dropped since the Crown Prosecution Service and Met Police decided the evidence did not meet the evidentiary threshold for a prosecution.

Release

The Runner was released on Amazon Prime Video on 2 September 2026.

Critical reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 10% of 47 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.6/10. According to Metacritic, the film received "generally unfavorable" reviews based on a weighted average score of 28 out of 100 from 14 critic scores.

Former Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers said of the film: "If someone asks you to watch The Runner with them, go with a two-word answer: hard pass". Robert Daniels of The New York Times commented: "Gal Gadot limps ahead as a desperate single mother in a thin race-against-time thriller".