The Daily Wire’s ‘Run Hide Fight: Infidels’ A Surprising Gift To Its Enemies
Editor’s note: This review contains spoilers.
(REVIEW) Hollywood has always expressed contemporary American cultural anxieties. So it makes sense that films in the past 25 years since 9/11 have frequently dealt with America’s relationship with Islam. TV shows like “24” showed the heroic Jack Bauer fighting Muslim terrorists. Historical epics like “Kingdom of Heaven” revealed a sympathetic portrait of Muslims during the Crusades. “The Big Sick” recounted the story of a man torn between his conservative Muslim parents and his own Western lifestyle. All these, in different ways, wrestled with the place of Muslims in American culture.
For many politically conservative Americans, Hollywood’s handling of these issues has been frequently compromised by a liberal bias that refuses to acknowledge some incompatibility between radical Islam and Western values of freedom and religious pluralism.
Enter The Daily Wire. The conservative media company, best known for its co-founder Ben Shapiro, has been trying to bring a more right-leaning voice to American entertainment since 2021 with the film “Run Hide Fight.” Now, following the recent success of their show “The Pendragon Cycle” on Prime Video, they’re releasing “Run Hide Fight: Infidels”: A 1980s-style action thriller about college students and a Delta Force vet fighting off an Islamic terror attack.
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Unfortunately, whatever merits the idea or intention behind “Infidels,” its failures in both entertainment and religious commentary show that conservatives have a long way to go to actually contribute meaningfully to cultural discourse through narrative entertainment.
The strangest thing about “Infidels” is how often the film itself seems to hate Western values. The film sets up the civilizational conflict between Islam and the U.S. The fact that “Infidels” ignores the existence of pro-Western Muslims legitimizes charges of Islamophobia. The fact that it ignores assimilated anti-Western Muslims makes the film far less interesting or resonant.
Starring Jonathan Majors (“Loki”, “Ant-Man and “The Wasp”), “Run Hide Fight: Infidels” is a spiritual semi-sequel to Daily Wire’s 2021 film “Run Hide Fight,” written and directed by that film’s Kyle Rankin. When radical Muslim terrorists hijack a liberal college's pro-Palestine encampment to enforce Sharia law on students and execute “infidels,” a ragtag band of red-blooded students, a security guard tired of “Uncle Tom” smears and Delta Force vet Clay Saunders (Majors) arm themselves to save their peers.
This film was controversial as soon as it was announced. Majors joined the project after being dropped by Disney after his 2023 conviction for misdemeanor assault and harassment involving former girlfriend Grace Jabbari. (Shapiro later argued it was “at best a pretty empty conviction” because he only “kinda pushed” her into a car). On-set injuries prompted some crew members to walk off set and protest the film. When the trailer dropped, it prompted accusations of Islamophobia.
When Muslim advocacy groups like CAIR heard Saunders had delivered a speech in the film claiming Islam and the West are incompatible, they denounced the film, saying, “This idiotic propaganda masquerading as a film appears to be the latest sign that Ben Shapiro is increasingly desperate to save his company and completely out of touch with the American public.”
A 2019 Pew Research poll reported that 44% of American adults believed there was a natural conflict between Islam and Western values. The number of Americans who believe Islam promotes violence jumped from 25% in 2002 to over half today. This is 76% among Republicans.
American Muslim Manhattan Institute director Rehein Salam himself this year expressed concerns that Muslim Americans were increasingly hostile to Americans’ way of life, which he said was bad news given the growing political and cultural power of Muslims in American life.
The biggest problem with “Infidels” is its execution. On a story level, the characters are all mostly surface-level stereotypes, without charisma. The college male and female leads have nothing in common and no truly defining personalities, dreams or goals. The Islamic terrorist villains are boring, having neither depth nor the campy charm of a good ‘80s megalomaniac. The film regularly interrupts its flow to preach to the audience. The pace of the action stops and starts too much to create adrenaline or a satisfying sense of catharsis at the end.
Contrast that with other movies that have tried to make similar cultural points in the context of a fun action movie. Movies like “Die Hard” and “Ghostbusters” managed to be entertaining thrillers that criticize naive and oppressive bureaucrats by showing how ridiculous these antagonists were rather than telling.
“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” maps particularly well onto the same themes “Infidels” is trying to explore: Patriotic soldiers who recognize the threat of Islamic fundamentalists in conflict with pencil-pushers who think diplomacy can build bridges with the people who hate them. “13 Hours” gives room for both sides to argue back and forth with each other. But the arguments are kept short and punchy. Most of the validation of the “right side” comes from watching their arguments play out in reality. Even more importantly, most of the runtime is spent on the action and one-liners that make the thriller so addictively tense.
Then there’s this movie’s handling of its religious subject matter. The screenwriters’ best idea and biggest contribution to how the West versus Islam conflict is portrayed on screen is showing the seemingly absurd (at least to the average observer) alliance between radical Islamists and Western progressives, exemplified in protests with signs like “Queers for Palestine”. But the film doesn’t treat that topic in a way that actually reflects the lived American reality.
Salam’s piece “Islam in America” identified three Muslim groups in America: pro-Western ones like himself, Islamists who have not assimilated into Western values and what he called “Third Worldism” — which is essentially Muslims who have assimilated into Western-born anti-Westernism.
If the Daily Wire wants to make a persuasive case that Islam and the West are incompatible, they have to do so in a way that rings true with the world we actually live in. This is what made movies like “Conclave” and “Wake Up Dead Man” so effective in their critiques against Christianity.
At the same time, the movie routinely shows more contempt for Western progressives than its Islamist villains. The filmmakers spend lengthy time allowing the Islamists to murder, humiliate and torture American progressives in ways that often feel gleeful. Villains mock the heroes for being weak because of their commitment to tolerance and due process.
“Run Hide Fight: Infidels” wants to tackle cultural anxieties that Hollywood ignores. But until they can execute those ideas half as well as the Hollywood films they’re reacting against, they will deserve much of the hate they get.
“Run Hide Fight: Infidels” is available to stream exclusively on the Daily Wire.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.