Overcoming the immediate sceptical reaction to another remake of an ’80s film, especially an Arnie vehicle, is always tough. It helps, though, that it’s Edgar Wright directing and once again he’s rewarded his fans with a hefty dose of entertainment.

In a weirdly parallel future world with Schwarzenegger on the banknotes and Aston Martin Lagondas still running, the Network provides entertainment to the public in the form of ultraviolent, gladiatorial game shows, with their flagship being The Running Man. Contestants have to survive a month being pursued by hunters, and the penalty for being captured is death. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is a man desperate to afford medicine to save his daughter, and gets bamboozled into participating by Network executive Dan Killian (Josh Brolin). As he plays the game, he realises that the board is decisively tilted and has to think outside the box to survive.

Wright follows Stephen King’s novel far more closely than the 1987 film and, although his version doesn’t have characters quite as ridiculous as Buzzsaw, it’s no less fun. Powell) plays up Richards’ enraged personality and chews the scenery to great effect. He has excellent chemistry sparring with Brolin‘s slick, beaming villain and the host of the show, Bobby Thompson, played with movie-stealing flair by Colman Domingo. There are tiny roles here filled by great actors, and none of them phones it in.

The film also lays on the action thick and fast. There’s plenty of old-school, bone-crunching, splattery killing in The Running Man, lots of huge explosions and breathless stunt work. Wright’s control of tone is exceptional, keeping things enjoyable even when the story gets dark. He uses Verhoeven-style media clips to push the satire into the realms of the absurd, but like Verhoeven he keeps the central character completely sincere. If you want to criticise Wright as a style-over-substance director, fine, but that style is good enough that the substance is just a bonus. It’s a relief that Wright has also avoided turning this ’80s dystopia into something “relevant” for “modern audiences”, and stuck to a good old generalised bipartisan distaste for economic unfairness and the media pandering to, lying to and manipulating the public. Wright’s main concern is pace and excitement, and The Running Man delivers.

There’s plenty of his eye-popping visual flair, swapping between the film’s point of view and the point of view of the cameras in the film, and it never feels too self-aware. Wright directs the film entirely without his tongue in his cheek, and so instead of chuckling at what the film is doing, we’re chuckling at what the characters are doing. It’s a funny old world when the director of the supremely meta Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz is making films with fewer nudges and winks than the mainstream competition. There are moments when the film breaks the fourth wall, but it’s because it’s depicting in-film media, not because it’s trying to subvert itself.

It’s not really fair to compare Wright’s film to the original. The original is a broad, campy satire and primarily a means for Schwarzenegger to flex his muscles and deliver one-liners as he kills baddies, which is a very specific sort of cinematic pleasure. Wright’s film aims for excitement as its own reward, and happens to be a droll satire while it’s doing it. This is a rip-roaring adventure you’ll want to see on the big screen.