DELIVERY RUN - Mark Reviews Movies

Delivery Run, Saban Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 16, 2025

Delivery Run features just enough oddball touches to wonder if this thriller could have been even stranger. Instead, co-writer/director Joey Palmroos struggles to make much of his familiar premise.

It's about a man against a machine, namely a snowplow (or a "snowplow truck," as the screenplay awkwardly calls it repeatedly), and, of course, another man, namely the murderous driver of said plow. He's just as threatening and deadly without multiple tons of vehicle backing up his violence, and the fact that Palmroos and co-screenwriter Anders Holmes can't even keep the villain's methods consistent shows that they run out of ideas pretty quickly.

It is funny, though, that our protagonist, a down-on-his-luck food delivery driver named Lee (Alexander Arnold), keeps referring to his homicidal maniac as "Mr. Plow" (Jussi Lampi). The killer shows that he is, well, a killer in an unnecessary prologue that gives away the game immediately, as the survivor of the snowplow's vehicular carnage tries to crawl away from the speeding truck, and doesn't even give us any kind of grisly payoff to ruining the gimmick so soon.

Living in a remote small town in Minnesota, Lee wants to buy a food truck to start a business, but he's behind on all of his bills and owes a lot of money to local loan shark Rebecca (Nadine Higgin). She shows up with one of her goons, knocks Lee around a bit, and threatens his pet goldfish if he doesn't come up $7,500 by the following day. It's kind of refreshing that the movie doesn't offer a conveniently round number for the character's debt, but if that's where one has to go in order to find something novel about a movie, the rest of it is pretty unexceptional.

Anyway, Lee heads out into the cold and on to the snow-covered roads, with his fish in a plastic bag on the dashboard, to start taking online delivery orders, somehow hoping he'll make enough in commission, tips, and the occasional trip to a casino to pay off his debt. While driving one stretch of road, he winds up behind the snowplow from the introductory scene and passes it. The driver lets out a startling blare of the truck's horn, and soon enough, Lee begins to see the plow almost everywhere he goes.

This plot is nothing new, of course, and for as intimidating as that truck can be when it lowers its plow and sends sparks as its weighty point drags along the pavement, the screenplay simply features too many starts and stops for the story to have a sense of momentum to match its villainous vehicle. Lee keeps going about his business, making a couple of deliveries and looking for cash wherever he can find it, and keeps an eye out for the plow, as well as its mysterious driver.

A local Sheriff's deputy (played by Liam James Collins) doesn't believe Lee when he accuses whoever's driving the random snowplow of attempted murder for bumping into him during their second encounter. The deputy's Minnesotan accent is so thick that the character feels as if he entered this movie from its funnier, more self-aware version in an alternate reality. The version Palmroos gives us is, for the most part, dully straightforward instead.

One of the problems, perhaps, is that the filmmakers have put themselves into a corner with its setting, which is defined mostly by long stretches of desolate road with snow barriers on either side. When Lee's car and the plow come into contact with each other, there's not much room for any maneuvering on the part of either vehicle, meaning we're constantly watching the snowplow try to catch up with the little car or the two drivers facing each other in a standoff. Those sequences become repetitive quickly, and when the vehicular showdown is set in the more open space of a frozen lake at one point, the staging of the scene comes down to Lee driving in a circle—much like the plot itself, really.

It doesn't help matters that the snowplow seems to have the ability to teleport, which is most noticeable in a potentially clever section of the chase where Lee has to stop to get gas, and that, outside of the truck, Mr. Plow is also just a generic, ax-wielding killer. One scene has Lee showing up at the killer's mountaintop lair, and beyond the fact that it sets up a hollow moment of shock involving a woman whom the movie treats as disposable, it only works if our protagonist somehow can't see something that's rather obvious until he needs to.

To be sure, Delivery Run doesn't take itself too seriously—but not flippantly enough to write off its blandness and those assorted contrivances. Considering how limited the plot and threat of this story are, the filmmakers might have taken the construction of their action and suspense sequences a bit more seriously.

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