Hey folks, Harry here... with a shocking revelation about Mr Beaks... he loves The Rock apparently. At first, I read just his review, then he sent along these photos... apparently from something called... "Mr. Beaks' Stash" Be Afraid. Hmmm... Well from all accounts THE RUNDOWN is supposed to be a fun time at the movies, we'll see won't we?
THE RUNDOWN (d. Peter Berg, w. R.J. Stewart and James Vanderbilt)
“Have Fun.”
By now, everyone knows about the cameo that will, intentionally or no, surely be referred to ten years hence as a monumental torch passing moment in the annals of action film history. On his way out of the club (and into the Governor’s mansion?) is Arnold Schwarzenegger, while passing him on his way in is The Rock. Ten rib-cracking, skull-caving, eye-blackening minutes later, there will be a new (and thankfully non-geriatric) king of the action film hill.
It’s about fucking time, too. It’s not so much that the muscle-bound hero genre is in desperate need of preservation lest our national identity be lost at the same tail tucking moment our emasculated cowboy-in-chief goes back to the U.N. (the Security Council playing the role of the fight wary villagers, I suppose) to ask for what essentially amounts to a bailout in the war against reason and accountability. Nah! We’re much too large in the trousers to let that nonsense bother us. After all, we’ve still got the chiseled physiques of Vin Diesel… um, Keanu Reeves and… I don’t know… Matthew Perry to serve as cinematic compensation for our inadequacies.
Okay, so maybe we *do* need another strongman surrogate up there on the big screen to make us feel virile again. For years, producers, publicists and even a prominent movie critic (Roger Ebert) have been excitedly claiming that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is that impossibly perfect physical specimen. But while he certainly looked and acted the part, his appeal to studio execs buffered enormously by his dedicated fan base built up from several years spent as Vince McMahon’s top dog over at the WWE, his first two film appearances were decidedly underwhelming. In THE MUMMY RETURNS, he was a glowering, uncharismatic brick wall of muscle as The Scorpion King, softening the character ever so imperceptibly for his encore performance in the eponymously titled spin-off/pseudo-prequel. Whatever I was supposed to be seeing in The Rock, no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find it. He seemed too blandly pretty to be the heir apparent to the barrel-chested duo of Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Without their peculiar, but nonetheless palpable charisma, I had this guy pegged, at best, as a future Mark Dacascos.
Seven years from now, when the National Association of Theater Owners is honoring The Rock as the Star of the Decade, the first person he thanks had better be Peter Berg. Working from a smart enough script from R.J. Stewart and James Venderbilt (the latter *almost* making up for his involvement in what might end up being this year’s two worst films, DARKNESS FALLS and BASIC), Berg wisely dials up the testosterone in the opening sequence by staging character introductions like glossy player profiles on a Fox NFL broadcast (kudos on the well-timed release), which is appropriate since The Rock’s character, a skip tracer tersely known as Beck, has nervously waded into an upscale nightclub to secure collateral from the Art Schlichter-esque (for the non-football literate, that’s just my pedantic way of saying he’s a compulsive gambler) Quarterback of the reigning Super Bowl champions. The scene is brilliantly set up for maximum, goal obtaining conflict: the collateral in question is the QB’s Super Bowl ring, and he’s surrounded by his impenetrable offensive line. Beck is, essentially, the lone man rushing the passer, and, to further complicate matters, he’s also a bit of a fan. Out of respect, he first attempts the nice guy route, and ends up wearing a drink for his trouble. Humiliated, Beck hits the men’s room for a gut check. There’s no way out of this; he *needs* to get that ring. So, he psychs himself up, heads back out into the club, and, with a steely glare having replaced his earlier reticence, delivers his catch-phrase worthy ultimatum. If you’re not giddy at the prospect of the looming mayhem, you probably should be holding your girlfriend’s hand in the adjacent theater while she thrills to the middle-aged female discovery of UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN.
The best thing about this sequence, besides Berg’s blessedly clean execution and editing of Andy Cheng’s fight choreography, is how fucking liberating it feels to watch The Rock go to town on these hulking linemen. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a film where the protagonist has gone head-up, power on power, in a fistfight, but that’s exactly what we get here. And it’s a real bruiser, too; these are some big boys tangling, and they leave a wide swath of destruction in their wake. Heads get slammed through tables, walls, concrete pillars… it’s safe to say that heads don’t fare too well in this film. I’m also assuming, by virtue of the ecstatic crowd reaction, that The Rock utilizes his signature wrestling move in driving one of his foes to the floor. But even without that frame of reference, I was nearly out of my seat cheering the guy on all through the sequence. By fracases end, Beck might be banged up, but he has his ring, while Berg and The Rock have the audience eating out of their hand.
It must be noted that THE RUNDOWN, particularly in its set-up, bears more than a passing resemblance to MIDNIGHT RUN; to wit, Beck dreams of quitting his ignoble gig to open up a restaurant (it was a coffee shop in the earlier film), while he loses his initial, hard-earned bounty to a rival hunter, who blindsides him coming out of the club. And, of course, once the plot kicks into gear and heads down to South America, there’s the quarrelsome relationship struck up between Beck and his quarry, Travis (Seann William Scott), the irresponsible, treasure hunting rich kid who represents the big, cash-in collar that will simultaneously free Beck from his unsavory obligation to his crime lord employer, while granting him his long pined for financial freedom. Luckily, Berg keeps infusing the movie with the same confident panache evinced in the dynamic opening, making THE RUNDOWN a wholly distinct variation on an old classic that’s solid enough on its own even if it never reaches the heights of the original.
If there is a problem with THE RUNDOWN, it’s that the heights that *are* reached are hit mostly in the first half, after which Berg has essentially blown his load insofar as his inventively lensed fight sequences are concerned, giving way to a hobbling repetitiveness that causes the film to plateau. And while it certainly plateaus energetically, there’s an undeniable loss of oomph in the proceedings that even the foreshadowed emergence of Beck’s forever simmering bad side can’t counteract. This is unfortunate because, for the first hour, it’s a great ride, slamming forward at a breakneck pace, enlivened by a typically bizarre (i.e. hopelessly entertaining) turn from Christopher Walken in the Dennis Farina role as Hatcher, a Kurtz-like industrialist making his fortune off the sweat and blood of the natives. Hatcher also “owns” Travis, so it isn’t long before Beck finds himself at odds with this lunatic and his bullwhip wielding henchmen. These guys look positioned to be a memorable group of baddies, particularly after they massacre a group of rebels with whom Beck and Travis have bonded, but Berg and his writers sacrifice the audience’s emotional investment in their plight by getting too bogged down in the Indiana Jones shenanigans surrounding Travis’s hunt for a sacred idol that also happens to be the fabled salvation of the natives.
That the film ends up resolving itself in a rather pat manner is disappointing only because it gets off to such a blazing start, and it’s these flaws that will keep the film from becoming a fondly recalled classic of the genre as some folks have claimed (call me critical if you must, but the audience I saw it with quieted down noticeably in the home stretch). But despite these misgivings, I don’t want to come off as a killjoy; THE RUNDOWN, even when it stumbles, is never less than entertaining, offering up a slam-bang antidote to the acrid, amoral aftertaste of this year’s other rollicking action extravaganza, BAD BOYS II (and at probably half the cost of that film). It’s the high of that first hour that overwhelms the missteps, and sends you strutting out of the theater ready to take on the world. In other words, it makes you want to be The Rock.
Now, all they have to do is change the title of his upcoming non-remake remake of WALKING TALL to something *not* associated with the legend of Buford Pusser, and I’ll be able to sing The Rock’s praises without compunction.
Faithfully submitted,
