Gal Gadot takes a painful hit: "It's hard to forgive this"
The new action thriller starring the Israeli actress was released on Amazon Prime Video and received particularly scathing reviews, with critics giving it embarrassing scores and attacking the thin plot and unoriginal script.
The British action thriller "The Runner," starring Gal Gadot, was released Wednesday on the streaming service Amazon Prime Video, but it arrived in the shadow of a particularly cold wave of reviews.
The film, which spans 84 minutes, received low scores on leading rating sites: only 9% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, a meager score of 31 out of 100 on the Metacritic critic index (alongside a low user average of 3.8), and a lukewarm score of only 4.6 on IMDb.
Critics did not spare the production team. Their main complaints focused on a shallow, unoriginal script and a thin, unintelligent plot. Benjamin Lee of the British "Guardian" noted that although intelligence is not a requirement in such a film,
"it is hard to forgive the fact that the film is not exciting."
Going further was critic William Bibbiani from the website The Wrap, who sarcastically claimed that the film "is not exactly a thriller. It is also not exactly a movie," and added that it is more suitable to serve as a funny episode on the game show "Taskmaster."
Alongside the bashing, some critics found small bright spots and even complimented the fast-paced action, the decent cinematography, and the performance of the Israeli star. Alex Maidy from the website JoBlo praised Gadot's "considerable physical effort," although he determined that the film itself is "not strong enough."
Similarly, Scott Collura from the website IGN wrote that Gadot "does her best to keep the film moving," but concluded that apart from a few key scenes, the work simply does not deliver the goods.
