The Rundown
Why does Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson get to bill himself as The Rock in some movies and Dwayne Johnson in others? Does anyone else in the Screen Actors Guild have this privilege? Whatever the reason, he's The Rock in this rousing, yet thoroughly silly action film. He's actually pretty good at this type of thing—better than Stallone, not as good as Schwarzenegger (watch for an early cameo in which Arnold passes the torch).
The Rundown starts with an exhilarating opening sequence that the rest of the film never quite lives up to. The stunts and fight sequences get goofier and goofier, and the action more grandiose, in a futile attempt to mask a threadbare plot. Also dragging down the movie is Seann William Scott, the unfunny doofus from the American Pie films who somehow keeps finding work playing the same annoying idiot he always does. It's one thing to be out-classed by the likes of Rosario Dawson and Christopher Walken, but when you make The Rock look like Laurence Olivier, maybe it's time to hang it up.
Speaking of Walken, he is absolutely the best thing about The Rundown. Coyly funny, he plays the film's bad guy as a cross between a two-bit con man and his Bond villain from A View To A Kill. If only he had been featured a little more, and Scott a lot less, The Rundown could have lived up to its full potential as a B-movie.- July 30, 2008
DVD Extras
There's no shortage of information on this DVD, even if most of it isn't very interesting. There are several short featurettes: a making of documentary about The Rock and all the stunt work he did; another about shooting in Hawaii (which doubles for the Brazilian rainforest); more details on other stunt work; a really stupid one about working with the baboons and The Rock's supposed love affair with one of them; an actually interesting look at building the set of the Brazilian jungle town in the middle of the Los Angeles desert (it fooled me while watching the movie); and finally, a much needed entry focusing on Walken and his part in the film. There are also about 15 minutes of deleted/extended scenes, few of which would have been useful at all (though the scene with Walken is funny), plus some DVD-ROM thing and a cast and crew rundown (sorry, couldn't resist).