Posted September 2026

The Academy Award-winning director talks about directing Gal Gadot, creating physical exhaustion on screen and constructing a mystery designed to stay one step ahead of its audience.

Some thrillers invite you to watch.

The Runner practically dares you to keep up.

I had an opportunity to see the new Prime Video psychological thriller before sitting down with its director, Kevin Macdonald, and somewhere along the way something interesting happened.

I got tired.

Not tired of the movie.

I became tired with its main character.

Gal Gadot plays Maia Marten, a London lawyer whose seemingly routine run suddenly becomes a nightmare when she learns that her son has been kidnapped.

The person controlling the situation gives her instructions.

Keep moving. Do what you're told. Tell no one.

And so Maia runs.

And runs.

And keeps running.

As I watched her become increasingly exhausted and desperate, Macdonald's filmmaking pulled me far enough into Maia's ordeal that I began feeling some of that exhaustion myself.

But that was only half of what was going on.

Because while Maia was trying desperately to save her son, I was trying desperately to solve the movie.

Who's Behind It?

That's one of my favorite things about a good mystery thriller.

Give me the clues and I'm going to play along.

I was looking for tells. Watching characters. Questioning motivations. Trying to decide what mattered and what didn't.

I thought I could get ahead of it.

I didn't.

That's a compliment.

A mystery needs to give its audience enough information to make us believe we might be able to figure everything out while still keeping something hidden up its sleeve.

That's one of the subjects I wanted to explore when I spoke with Kevin Macdonald.

Making the Audience Run

Macdonald's challenge with The Runner goes beyond simply creating suspense.

The movie is built around movement.

That creates an interesting problem for a filmmaker: How do you communicate a character's growing physical exhaustion without exhausting the audience?

There's also Gadot's performance.

Maia isn't merely running.

She's thinking, reacting, calculating and trying to control her terror while believing that every decision she makes could determine whether her son lives or dies.

The physical performance and emotional performance have to become one.

Macdonald and I discuss that challenge, working with Gadot and the filmmaking decisions behind creating such a relentless experience.

Staying One Step Ahead

Then there's the mystery itself.

How much does a director want us to know?

How much does he want us to think we know?

And how do you plant clues without announcing that they're clues?

That's where The Runner was particularly effective for me.

I kept trying to solve it.

The movie kept running ahead of me.

For a film called The Runner, that's rather appropriate.

Watch my complete conversation with director Kevin Macdonald and then watch the movie and see whether you do any better than I did.

Just don't expect me to give you any clues.

The Runner stars Gal Gadot, Damian Lewis, Rory Wilmot and Alfred Enoch. Directed by Kevin Macdonald and written by Mark Gibson, the film is now streaming on Prime Video.

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