Later last year, I reviewed a live-action slice-of-life series from Japan titled Samurai Gourmet. In that review, I marveled over how calming the story and food photography were. Fast forward to now, and we have another review for a series as far in the opposite direction as possible. Run For The Money Battle Royal isn’t a calming show at all. It’s actually quite stressful to watch, but it is some of the most exciting television I’ve watched in a very long time.
Premiering on Netflix in November 2022, Run For The Money adapts the original game show that began airing on Fuji TV in 2004. In this series, a group of celebrities gets set loose onto a playing field (in the first set of episodes, it is the Japanese theme park Huis Ten Bosch) and given a short head start on the 200-minute race for survival before a group of “hunters” (think emotionless Terminators in sharp black suits) begin chasing after them. The contestants have that exact amount of time to avoid being tagged by one of these hunters to win the prize money, which rises in value every second they survive.
While you can compare this game to other reality television such as The Amazing Race, ultimately, this is a game of tag with relatively low stakes. Even if a contestant makes it all the way to the end of the game, they’re only going to win around USD$50,000. Unfortunately, one of the most uninteresting aspects of this series is the contestants themselves.
As the show progresses, you learn to sympathize with the runners. But in the first half, it’s hard to care about who each person is unless you’re already very dialed in on current East Asian pop culture, which only a tiny percentage of us are. As the series progresses and the audience learns more about each contestant’s personality and play style, it becomes easier to choose favorites. But it takes a while to get to that point.
What makes this show so interesting is the presentation put together by the producers with certain information, such as the identity of one traitor (there are two traitors among the contestants who are being paid bonus prize money to rat out the locations of their fellow players), being kept a secret until the very end. Add the eerie narration and the occasional inserts from the game master (played wonderfully over the top by Sato Jiro), and you have a recipe for intense competition.
Throughout the game, contestants receive messages on cell phones informing them of missions they can choose to complete. I say “choose” because while the contestants can willingly opt out of doing these missions and try to stay hidden, thus evading capture, not working together with the remaining contestants to complete these missions can lead to more hunters being released onto the playfield which lowers their odds of surviving until the end and winning any prize money.
You read that last sentence correctly. This is an all-or-nothing game. Sure, any contestant can surrender along the way and take home some of the prize money. But, if a contestant attempts to survive until the end to take home the maximum prize, they must persist all the way through to the last second, or else they will get precisely nothing. If this sounds harsh, you’d be absolutely right, and it makes for some brilliant television for the audience.
The field starts with 29 celebrities of various stature. Some of them are boy band members, including members of SHINee and JO1. Some are YouTubers or influencers, some are former athletes, and some are comedians. After a short head start before the race officially begins, twenty hunters get sent after them, and the chase starts in earnest. By completing the previously mentioned teamwork missions, the contestants can decrease the number of hunters on the field. But there is always the threat of more being released later.
As the contestants grow increasingly wary of each other because of their exhaustion reaching peak levels, the missions grow harder. While one early mission has the contestants attempting to keep the number of hunters on the field below a dozen, the next task has them trying to find temporary safety inside a tower before they momentarily release 100 additional hunters onto the field. After the game master takes away those 100 hunters, they are brought back to the latest stage of the game in a way that the audience will not see coming.
What I enjoyed the most about Run For The Money was the unpredictable nature of events. While you might believe you know who stands the best chance at surviving until the end, there is no way to really predict who will be the next to escape capture when a hunter could be lurking around any corner.
In the end, Run For The Money is engrossing television that will suck you in with each passing second. Even if you don’t know who these contestants are at the start of the game, by the end, you’ll want to see someone escape capture to take home the money. Will any of them succeed? You’ll have to watch to find out.
