Los Angeles, 2017: America has become a police state & its citizens are mollified with a steady diet of violent television shows. The most popular one is ' The Running Man' where convicts try to survive an invariably lethal obstacle course. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a prison escapee & sometime freedom fighter who, recaptured, finds himself running for his life on the show. Directed by actor Paul Michael Glaser (of ' Starsky & Hutch' fame).