God forbid that Gal Gadot bumps into another Jew. As single parent lawyer Maia she is forced by the kidnapper of her young son Noah to divert from her normal morning running route through some of London’s more Jewish neighbourhoods.
Yet as the Israeli star pounds through Hampstead and its Heath and is then sent by the mysterious voice in her headphones south through Kentish Town and Camden, scything through the city’s multi-ethnic population as she goes, although she attracts many an “Oi” as she barges past there is never a “Vey’.
Perhaps director Kevin Macdonald, the grandson of the Hungarian Jewish filmmaker Emeric Pressburger no less, thought it was just too complicated to have both Gadot and visibly Jewish extras on a set that was attracting anti-Israel protestors– some of whom were arrested while filming on location in London last year.
Apart from Gadot and a cameo from Damian Lewis, London is the star. The plot, not so much.
Maia’s son Noah is, we learn early on in the opening domestic scene, a diabetic. The kidnapper has induced a hypoglycaemic coma into the boy. If Noah is to get the antidote before he dies Maia has an hour to get to the central London hotel where her star witness is being held. On the way she is to collect the pistol with which she must shoot the witness, thus ensuring that the defendant – the employer of Maia’s mysterious tormenter – is acquitted. Simples.
Maia is a role for which Gadot deploys the full range of emotions between breathless and knackered. Not since Dustin Hoffman’s Marathon Man (1976) have Jewish feet pounded a city’s streets in a life-and-death situation. The difference is not just that Hoffman’s Thomas Levy is escaping Laurence Olivier’s Nazi while Gadot’s Maia is desperately and increasingly sweatily trying to get to her son. It is that Schlesinger incorporated into the action the grit, solitude and psychology of being a runner. In Macdonald’s hands running can be incorporated into a race to save a child and murder a witness, yet still remain an attractive lifestyle choice.
During her mission Maia is forced into some unfamiliar corners of London including the shadowy interior of a church. Seeing her distress the eerily attentive priest tells our heroine about blood sacrifice and assures her that there is always another choice from her chosen path. And he is right. Bevis Marks Synagogue is just down the road.
The Runner is available on Amazon Prime Video
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