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The Rock is starting to show real acting ability, first in The Scorpion King and now in 2003′s The Rundown, with more than just action chops; I’m looking forward to his performance as a gay bodyguard/aspiring singer in the upcoming Get Shorty sequel Be Cool. For my money, the ex-WWE wrestler has emerged with Vin Diesel and Matt Damon as the newest class of American stars capable of delivering successfully in action and comedy (the Governator even makes a passing the torch cameo in this movie’s opening scene); he’s apparently attached to play the title character in a live action version of Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo which might be an interesting indicator of how far Dwayne Johnson can move from his action base.
Beck (The Rock) dreams of opening his own restaurant, keeping a small notebook for recipe ideas, but is stuck–reason unspecified–working for an LA crime boss (veteran character actor William Lucking) as a retrieval specialist. One more job will fulfill his obligation but his assignment is a real doozy: head down to the Amazon, find the gangster’s wayward son Travis and bring him home.
American Pie vet Sean William Scott is the son, a college dropout and modern day Indiana Jones wannabe, on the trail of El Gato de Diablo (the Devil’s Cat), a mythical pre-Columbian statue made of pure gold. Director Peter Berg (most recently in theaters with the semi-hit Friday Night Lights) wisely wastes no time getting Beck and Travis together: one minute Beck has his orders, the next he’s on a tiny plane avoiding herd of steers on the dusty landing strip, and the next at Rosario Dawson’s bar, Scott sneaking out but betrayed by the bar’s mirror.
Two obstacles stand in between Beck and a simple success: Hatcher (Christopher Walken), an American running an illicit goldmine on whose territory the statue is hidden, and Mariana ( the lovely Dawson), providing Scott with material support for her own ulterior motives.
Given a role that other actors might have walked through for the paycheck, Walken takes too much pleasure from his performances and takes the part of a greedy, arrogant sociopath to the next level; in my mind’s eye I saw Hatcher twirling the ends of his waxed mustache as his eyes lit up when Beck appeared on (security) camera to initiate the climactic battle. Dawson, too, was given a substantive, interesting character rather than the stereotypical bimbo so often used to add salaciousness for the teen male demographic.
Ernie Reyes Jr. has a great supporting part as leader of a band of Amazonian natives that capture Beck and Travis. Reyes is not much more than half the size of The Rock but he and his crew use some amazing martial arts skills and aerobatics to nearly win a fight that Travis provokes to escape from the no-nonsense Beck. This was one of the most original, enjoyable movie fight scenes I’ve seen since Hollywood imported Jackie Chan, John Woo and associates from Hong Kong.
Writers RJ Stewart (breaking back into film after writing many scripts for Xena: Warrior Princess) and James Vanderbilt (Darkness Falls) also give Beck a very memorable recurring standard bit. To open each confrontion with another character–such as the meeting with Travis, to explain that the two will be returning to his father in LA–Beck offers Option A and Option B. The former is to go easy, the latter to go hard and, in answer to Travis, there’s never an Option C even if Travis and later Hatcher, to their detriment, believe otherwise. These bits provide The Rock good material which he uses to show that acting ability I mentioned.
Berg keeps the action moving at a very good pace and wastes very few of his 100 minutes on scenes that don’t serve both plot and character development. One could easily imagine a version by a different director who added, for instance, scenes to establish the relationship between Scott, Dawson and Walken or, strengthening the mirroring between protagonist and antagonist, how Walken came to be running the mines. Good job.
recommended
Bonus note: Scott will make a brief cameo as Stiffler in the upcoming straight to DVD attempt to capitalize on a cash cow American Pie: Band Camp, with the plot focusing on his character’s younger brother and his plan to make a Girls Gone Wild-style video. Yes, Jennifer Coolidge will reprise her role as America’s favorite MILF.
