Running ManSet in a dystopic 2017 Los Angeles now a police state in the wake of the global economy's total collapse. "The Running Man" is the hottest rated reality competition series, where condemned criminals are given a chance for freedom by running through a gauntlet of heavily armed killers known as "Stalkers." When an ex cop (Schwarzenegger) is wrongly convicted of a violent crime, he finds himself on the series in the company of other prisoner