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The Rundown - 9/26/03 - PG-13 - 104m
The
Rock - Beck
Seann William Scott - Travis
Rosario Dawson - Mariana
Director: Peter Berg
Screenplay by: R.J. Stewart
Studio: Universal
Official
Website
JEF
I’ll lump this movie in the typical “action adventure”
category that Hollywood is famous for churning out these days. In the
past I’ve come down a little hard on some of these styles of films,
some well deserved of course. But every now and then, you need a movie
like this. A movie that does not involve complicated plot twists, or heart-wrenching
acting that will bring half the audience to tears. But just a plain old
action adventure movie that is just entertaining with some good stunts,
fight scenes, maybe throw in a few good jokes, and sprinkle in some explosions
and a movie like this is fun.
Storyline: Beck (Dwayne Douglas Johnson or otherwise
known as “The Rock”) is a sort of bounty hunter, but for the
bad guys. He works for a shady character Billy Walker (William Lucking)
who I’m unclear exactly what he does, but it has a sort of loan
shark quality to it. Beck is a “retrieval expert”… he
goes and finds the people who owe Mr. Walker a debt, and through any means
necessary is able to secure some form of payment from the “client”
whether it is an item of jewelry or cash or possibly a broken limb. Beck
is looking to get out of the “retrieval” business and open
his own restaurant, but in order to do so, he has to clear his own debt
with Mr. Walker. So Walker gives him one last job… to retrieve his
son Travis (Seann William Scott) from some Amazon jungle where he is attempting
to find an ancient lost artifact. So off Beck goes into the jungles, and
the adventure begins.
I probably would have skipped this movie if it were not for the trailer.
I’m not a wrestling fan, and have not seen any other movie with
“The Rock” in it (actually I think I saw “The Mummy
Returns”). But I have to say “The Rock” did pretty well
in this film. A nice mix of tough-guy attitude mixed with a nice guy attitude
to balance things out. Nothing too over-the-top from him that was nice.
I can’t seem to determine if I like Seann William Scott as an actor
anymore… I think he’s got talent, and I think he can be a
funny person, but his performance just seemed a little flat. He was the
comic relief character in this film, and I think it was a little held
back. Maybe I’m just trying to type cast Scott but I expected a
little more from him. Christopher Walken played the roll of “Hatcher”
who was a creepy sort of bad guy character. Not exactly a deviation of
Walken’s other characters, but if you are a fan of his, you won’t
be let down. Strange side note… in the trailer for the movie he
is seen getting a pistol shot out of his hand where he yells “Ooouuch!”
that’s pretty funny, but this scene was cut from the actual movie.
The fight scenes were very well done. The choreography was terrific. There
were some scenes where the Rock is getting beat up by a bunch of smaller
men, and he’s tossed through the air like a pinball getting hit
by multiple adversaries, I’ve not seen a fight scene like this,
and it was very well done.
The comedy was a nice touch to the film too. I kinda wanted to see more
of this, but it was a pretty good balance. I have to admit I had to laugh
at seeing The Rock afraid of the “crazed” monkeys.
All in all, an entertaining movie that wasn’t too long, and didn’t
require a lot of thought, a sort of modern day Indiana Jones with a WWF
flavor to it.
Jef
Here's
what Lyn thought...
PS> I’m still trying to figure out the cameo from Arnold Schwarzenegger…
It was almost like a ceremonial torch being passed from Arnold to “The
Rock”.
