Corporate Line: When Travis (Scott), the son of an underworld kingpin, disappears in the Amazon in search of a priceless artifact, Beck (Rock), the kingpin’s retrieval expert, is sent to get him. Despite their hostility – and their love for the same woman (Dawson) – the two must eventually join forces to fight the evil head (Walken) of a gold-mining corporation who is after the same treasure.
The Good: Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a cameo early in the film and passes the Rock as if to signify the passing of the action hero torch to the more able bodied. Arnold must be confident about this governor thing… but I digress. The Rock sticks a fist in this sucker and knocks it out. (note: I know it might be asking too much, but wouldn’t it be a good thing if “The Rock” went by his real name, Dwayne Johnson? Wouldn’t it make his mother proud?)
The Rock leaves behind all those little jokes and means business. His character Beck is a man of few words and lets his fists do most of the talking. This is what we want from our action heroes. It’s a simple formula; They came, they saw, they kicked some ass. Of course there is plenty of filler, most of which is lead by Seann William Scott. We get led into a jungle, given a story about natives and so on, but all we are waiting for is the Rock to beat someone up. We know what the ending is going to be, we see it coming fifteen minutes into the film but of course we have to wait for it all to unfold otherwise the movie would last maybe thirty minutes. Wait, would that be so bad? Not if they edited some of the bad.
The Bad: Walken is okay, it’s not his fault that the bone had no meat on it, while the other cast of characters fall somewhere below. Scott is given his usual one-liners to help us get a chuckle; he’s the joker, the setup guy. The problem is that Arnold never needed a partner, did Stallone or Eastwood? We don’t want the Rock in a buddy picture and this film didn’t have to be – so please Universal if you plan on a sequel, don’t.
The plot is weak at best. Good idea: The rock as a bad guy’s henchman. Bad idea: Seann William Scott as Indiana Jones. Hello, and why doesn’t Rosario Dawson have an accent? She lives in the Amazon jungle for goodness sake – not the jungle’s of New York.
Frankly: The Rock rules. What is there not to like about the guy? He is everything that Vin Diesel wishes he was. The Rock has everything to be the biggest action hero in film today – minus the attitude – yes Jean Claude we are talking to you. Here’s to more of the Rock beating people up and less Seann William Scott playing in action movies. Give Scott a comedy and let us have our beatings without all the one-liners. You got a problem with that?
+ Charlie Craine
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