Truly we live in the age of The Rock. You can’t turn your
head without noticing that Dwayne Johnson is appearing in yet another
high-profile project wherein he demolishes buildings, boats, volcanoes, and
above all, helicopters. Like Schwarzenegger in the 80s, he’s made his mark by
appearing in absolutely everything big that he can—though it wasn’t always this
way. For a while, having everyone’s favorite Samoan was pretty much your death
mark—do you remember the Scorpion King? Or the Doom movie? Southland Tales? If
so, well, condolences on all the inevitable hard booze expenditures.
Things are different now, though, with the Fast and Furious
movies making a buck by means of translating sugar-coked five year old toy
fantasies onto the screen, and with Moana and Jumanji, seems Mr. Johnson can’t
do any wrong. And that brings us to one recent project of his that caught my
attention—Rampage. Mostly by means of having giant monsters in it, and I must
admit, I’m a sucker for oversized critters causing drastic lowering of property
prices and tossing around military vehicles like toys. So, how does it hold up?
First of all, it has to be said that all things considered,
it’s probably the best videogame movie in memory. That’s right, it’s adapted
from a 1980s arcade game, and that was probably the best movie—unlike something
like say Halo, there’s no real Deep Sacred Lore to violate, and the original
story was loose enough that all you needed were the ingredients of a giant wolf,
lizard, and crocodile. So…yeah, it does a much better job of Johnson’s last
game adaptation, Doom, which was having a seizure inside a barely lit warehouse.
So that being said, it starts off with Dwayne working as a
zookeeper who also happens to be ex special forces and hyper-muscled. Yeah, that’s
a typical Rock character. And while his character here does have a name, you’re
just going to be thinking of him as ‘Dwayne Johnson’ anyway. In any case, he
happens to have a strong bond with an albino gorilla called George—represented
here in mocap, and is definitely one of the strong points of the film. Much
like in the recent Planet of the Apes film, the CG is excellent on him (even if
the other creature characters aren’t as well done), and you very rarely think
that you’re watching someone on stilts covered in baubles. And it does help
that despite his ridiculous character and the silliness of the script, Dwayne
plays everything earnestly—which does help you get drawn in.
Before long, parts of a satellite run by evil corporate
baddies obsessed with cooking up a mutagenic serum that gives George a massive
growth spurt, as well as infecting a wolf and a crocodile. Interestingly,
George merely gets bigger while the other two sprout weird features like flight
and tusks, but who cares. The military soon gets involved, while the amusingly
bickering husband and wife antagonist duo go to extreme lengths to cover their
asses. Things move at a well paced rate that soon hitch Dwayne with former
scientist Naomie Harris, who continues to represent the inevitable British
takeover of Hollywood.
The final showdown in Chicago is where you get what you paid
for—tanks get thrown around like they’re made of paper, buildings get smashed
to pieces, and Dwayne boards and trashes every chopper he hops into to the
point of parody. Seriously, he even jumps into a convenient Apache gunship
that’s already downed so he can wreck it some more I guess. It does drag on a
bit at the very end, but if you want mass demolition by way of wildlife, you
sure as hell get it.
Now, while some things can be excused by it being a big dumb
Dwayne Johnson movie, there’s still some things that irked me—there’s several
characters set up who you think are going to play a decent role, but are kind
of sidelined or forgotten about. This includes Johnson’s zoo friends at the
beginning or an evil mercenary that you assume is going to represent the main
henchman, but nope, it’s all about Rock and his girlfriend. And a CIA agent
that tags along I guess. I suppose this helps keep the cast concise, but you either
just don’t set up these guys in such a way, or you at least give ‘em a cameo
later on.
Likewise, once Dwayne himself starts fighting the monsters
at the end, things do start to feel dragged out—at this point the climax feels
like it’s peaked, but we still gotta see what the Rock is cooking as he runs
around with a grenade launcher and very improbably survives impact with jagged
pieces of debris. But then again I’m not a Polynesian super-wrestler, so I
guess he could conceivably shrug that off.
But overall, for a popcorn flick like this, it’s worth a
look if you’re into creature features as I am, and as always, Dwayne at least
tries no matter what script he’s handed. It’s not so long that your backside desiccates
like a Transformers sequel, so for a matinee on Friday night that hopefully
doesn’t have kids hoping he’ll break into the Maui song, it’s worth a shot. As
far as the trend of Rocksploitation goes, I didn’t mind it.
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