Gal Gadot in the poster for The Runner
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The Runner has 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, so here’s why the Gal Gadot film is being torn to shreds

It's her lowest rated movie yet

Daisy Phillipson
3rd September 2026, 16:08
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Gal Gadot isn’t exactly known for starring in critical darlings, but she’s achieved a career first in The Runner, which has a current critics score of 9% on Rotten Tomatoes – her lowest one yet.

She was once Wonder Woman, but even then she hasn’t avoided the relentless memes and compilations dedicated to her *ahem* more memorable line deliveries. “Kal-El, no!”

But her acting career forges on, her latest role being in the new action thriller The Runner, which landed on Prime Video this week.

Directed by Kevin Macdonald, the plot is essentially Phone Booth meets Speed, except instead of Colin Farrell being held hostage by a mysterious caller or Sandra Bullock desperately keeping a bus above 50mph, Gadot’s Maia Marten has to keep running through London to save her kidnapped son.

In its defence, it’s an original story… but if the response is anything to go by, the positives end there. So, here’s why the film has achieved a measly 9% on Rotten Tomatoes…

The plot makes absolutely no sense

The Runner centres on high-powered London lawyer Maia Marten (Gadot), whose son is kidnapped while she’s out running. A mysterious caller orders her to sprint through London and complete various tasks, or else they’ll kill her child.

The problem here is that the movie’s own rules and logic continually fall apart. RogerEbert.com’s Brian Tallerico is brutal about this in his one-star review, describing it as an “exercise in illogical plotting”.

He argues that the screenplay pays almost no attention to believable human behaviour or how modern technology works, saying it’s “one of the most convoluted and nonsensical plots of all time.” But the most ruthless line has to be: “If the film has been executed in an entertaining manner, no one would care.”

Radio Times makes a similar complaint: Maia repeatedly deviates from the kidnapper’s instructions only for him to let it slide, before the film culminates in an ending the reviewer says feels like a “cheat.”

Even one of the more positive reviews calls the film “incredibly dumb in places” and says its ending piles on absurd reveals that haven’t been adequately set up.

In short, if you want to enjoy this film, you’re going to have to put all logical thought to the side.

It’s look and feel has been dubbed ‘migraine cinema’

Gal Gadot in The Runner
Credit: Prime Video

The Runner is an action thriller, and so the frantic editing, shaky camerawork and constant movement is par for the course. But this takes it to the disorientating extreme.

Daily Beast summed it up best when it wrote, “Shot and edited in the most gratingly frantic manner imaginable… it’s a fine example of migraine cinema.”

This frenetic energy was similarly slammed by The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee, who described Macdonald as “maniacally hurtling his camera around the city” but arguing it’s a dated imitation of 2000s cinema.

“The more he tries to insist a sense of style upon the film, the worse it ends up looking,” he wrote. Ouch.

It does feel like an attempt to mimic Danny Boyle’s hyperactive visual style, only without the controlled chaos that makes his films actually work.

Gal Gadot is still the queen of giving us nothing

Gal Gadot in The Runner
Credit: Prime Video

If Gadot was determined to lose the title of ‘queen who gives us absolutelyd nothing’, she’s not doing that in The Runner.

As Lee wrote, this sort role that is more physically than emotionally demanding may “seem like the safest place for Gadot’s rather limited skill set,” but even then it’s an “awkward stretch”.

The Playlist, meanwhile, said, “Gadot spends most of The Runner stuck on essentially one note: panicked, desperate, sweaty, and out of breath.”

Her performance receives a similar, albeit more brutal appraisal from the AV Club’s Jacob Oller, who said Gadot already has “enough trouble connecting words, actions, and emotions when she’s not the lead.”

In her defence, part of the criticism has gone to the script itself, but it feels as if these two elements have come together to make The Runner a slog to get through.

“The Runner is only 84 minutes, including credits, but it feels like three or four hours of Gadot chugging along,” added Oller. “Part of that is the rock-in-your-shoe dialogue, part of that is her inhuman delivery.”

Ah well, there’s always the next film. And if you still want to give The Runner a try, if only out of curiosity, it’s on Prime Video now. Godspeed.

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Featured image credit: Prime Video