Stars: The Rock, Seann William Scott, Rosario Dawson, Christopher Walken
Director: Peter Berg
Released: 9/2003
Rating: 4 stars

Action movies are usually fairly mindless excercises in pyrotechnics, stunt work, and special effects. But mindless excercises can often be quite entertaining. The Rundown is fully in that category: a thoroughly enjoyable action romp, with a healthy dose of humor, and validation of the next great action star the Rock.

Beck (Rock) is an enforcer for LA crime boss Walker (William Lucking). As the film opens, he is assigned the task of collecting on a gambling debt from a star NFL quarterback who is partying with members of his team's starting defensive and offensive lines. Knowing the team has a chance to repeat as Super Bowl champions, Beck does not want to hurt anybody. But when the quarterback refuses to play ball as it were, Beck is forced to take the whole team down with his fists and then take the Super Bowl ring as collateral.

Wanting to get out of the business to open a restaurant, Beck is given one last assignment for which he is promised $250 thousand on completion. He is to travel to the Amazon and retrieve Walker's son Travis (Scott) and bring him back to LA. On arriving in the Amazon, Beck meets a beautiful bartender (Dawson) who may be more than she appears, and the local boss Hatcher (Walken) who owns the town and everyone in it.

Since the career demises of such 80's and 90's stalwarts as Schwarzenegger and Stallone, the movie business has lacked a true big name action star. Wrestler The Rock (real name Dwayne Johnson) is the latest candidate to fill that role. His first big film was The Scorpion King, an offshoot of the Mummy franchise. It showed his potential, but was not really all that good. With The Rundown, I think we can say the next generation is here. There is even a cameo early in the film by Schwarzenegger himself, in what appears to be a passing of the torch.

The film is something of a throwback to an earlier age in action films. Rather than overdosing on gunfire and explosions, Beck gets the job done with his fists and his brain. It is a running theme that Beck does not like guns, and unloads them whenever he finds one.

In addition to the action, the script has a sense of humor. Stallone's weakness as an action hero was that he was too serious. He was rarely able to bring the humor to his characters that Arnold did. The Rock has Arnold's sensibility and humor. The story has several running jokes. Beck always presents two options to his opponents: option a (do what I tell you and come along quietly) and option b (raise a ruckus and then come along with me). The funniest scenes are when the clearly outmatched Travis taunts Beck with his "lightning and thunder" moves; after slapping Travis around a few times, Beck asks, "If you are done beating me up, can we get moving now?"

Then, of course, there is Christopher Walken, always a delight in these types of roles. I loved his motivational Tooth Fairy speech to the locals when he sends them to hunt down Beck and Travis. Vintage, classic Walken. And, of course, at the end, having been defeated in battle by Beck and shot by the locals, he readily agrees to go with Beck's option A. Then promptly dies.

In the end, The Rundown is a thoroughly enjoyable way to pass an evening.

Last updated 03/30/2004 09:34 AM