I often find myself in the mood for a mindless action flick. Faster, the new movie starring Dwayne Johnson (formerly known as The Rock) certainly fits into that category, but migrates so far into the "mindless...but stupid" box next door that it's a wonder it was ever made.
Johnson plays a man just out of prison who goes on a rampage to murder the the men who killed his brother. He was the victim of a gang who stole the money Johnson and company got from a bank robbery. Johnson--who is called "Driver" early on, but I don't recall any other name popping up--has spent his prison time gathering intel and resources to track down the four or five (who knows or, really, cares?) that are responsible for his bro's death. As he does so, in a four-day orgy of not very violent violence, he's pursued by cops Billy Bob Thornton and Carla Gugino. Add to this melange, a pompous British assassin/software magnate--who is as out of place as his accent in this strictly Hicksville environment--and you have a giant mess of a film.
Let's face it...The Rock has appeared in too many kid-friendly movies to tread back into R-rated action territory. And to be honest, I'm not really sure why this film was R-rated. It's not that violent, there's no nudity (even the one scene in a strip club features chastely-attired dancers) and I don't remember very many cuss-words, either. This should be a straight-forward vengeance story, but instead it gets mired down with the British assassin, a subplot so colossally stupid and out-of-place that it seems like it migrated in from the theater next door in the multiplex. (It doesn't help that the actor playing the assassin--Oliver Jackson-Cohen, known simply as "Killer" in the flick--is a major scenery-chewer either.) And the rest of the plot has so many holes, you can drive The Rock's most-conspicuous car-in-the-world (that no one ever seems to notice) right through them.
I should have gone to see Unstoppable. What could be more mindless than a runaway train?
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