Run Hide Fight: Infidels Struggles with Execution

“Run Hide Fight: Infidels” is the latest offering from the Daily Wire, but calling it a movie might be a stretch. It has a hard time meeting even the very low standards that qualify something as a film.

The core issue isn’t the film’s overt political angle; art often serves as a vehicle for uncomfortable truths, including political statements. The real concern is how it’s presented. Instead of allowing the audience to engage with the material thoughtfully, the filmmakers overload every character, joke, and scene with heavy-handed political messaging.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a film that portrays Islamist terrorism negatively, points out the cowardice of certain American institutions, or critiques contemporary campus politics. Creators can hold strong beliefs and incorporate them into their work. However, the problem with “Run Hide Fight: Infidels” is straightforward: it doesn’t trust its audience at all.

Every political statement is overly emphasized, every character trait is explained in depth, and every ideological disagreement comes with its own guide. The film doesn’t encourage viewers to interpret; it simply lays out conclusions, repeatedly ensuring that the audience does not miss them.

By the end of the film, it feels less like watching a movie and more like enduring a lengthy lecture from someone who constantly checks if you’re taking notes.

This frustration is compounded by the fact that, buried within “Infidels,” there’s the potential for an entertaining action film. Unfortunately, the filmmakers seem to have transformed a long monologue by Mark Levin into an entire movie.

The premise is simple: a group of Islamic terrorists targets a college campus, and Jonathan Majors’ character, a former Delta Force officer, emerges as one of the few capable of confronting them. It’s a premise that has the potential to be engaging—perhaps not groundbreaking, but certainly engaging.

However, “Run Hide Fight: Infidels” fails to capitalize on this potential.

Instead, it seems to fear that its viewers might see a terrorist attack and not grasp that terrorism is inherently wrong, leading to tedious explanations about that and the surrounding politics, even extending to the politics of those politics.

I’m not particularly bothered by the film’s conservative stance; many great films are deeply political, but they typically let audiences interpret those messages on their own.

In fact, I don’t believe the film’s major flaw is the forcefulness of its political views. Rather, its perspective could’ve been woven into a compelling thriller.

Picture a film where university leaders face an unfathomable crisis, students who’ve chanted political slogans are suddenly confronted with real violence, and characters realize that the ideological theories they debated have tangible consequences.

No character would need to break the fourth wall to clarify anything.

The audience can connect the dots. Yet, this is the part the filmmakers don’t seem to get.

There’s a significant difference between having a message and believing in that message. A confident filmmaker is aware that if they present an idea, the audience will engage with it, reaching their own conclusions, despite the nuances or complexities involved.

An insecure filmmaker, conversely, relies on half-explained characters with vague motivations but overt political beliefs to hammer the point home.

“Run Hide Fight: Infidels” embodies this insecurity.

It aims to provoke, yet it appears to distrust the provocations themselves, constantly reaching out to confirm that the audience grasps its core message.

The end result is surprisingly condescending.

Ironically, the film critiques the very intellectual conformity it exhibits. It spends nearly its entire runtime mocking those who lack independent thought while simultaneously preventing its own viewers from thinking freely.

The characters come off as mere stereotypes pulled from a political talk show, adorned in costumes to represent different viewpoints: the activist embodies activism, the administrator reflects leftist thought in academia, the terrorist personifies radical Islam, and the soldier symbolizes strength and resolution. Meanwhile, the humor underscores the filmmakers’ disdain for campus culture.

Once this formulaic approach is recognized, there’s little substance left to keep the film coherent.

The predictability of the movie doesn’t arise from foreseeing the plot, but from anticipating what the producers want every scene to signify.

It feels like a checklist of Republican messaging—radical Islamism, woke college students, Zionist viewpoints, and so on.

That’s a more significant problem.

The misfortune of “Run Hide Fight: Infidels” is that it didn’t need to be less political but rather needed to ease up on its desperate urge to prove that its political views mattered.

Instead, Ben Shapiro seems to yank the audience by the shoulders, impatiently demanding, “Did you get it?”

Yes, we did. We all understood it the first time.