I have no real exposure to The Rock; I didn’t watch wrestling on television. My only exposure to him was in The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King. I wasn’t really impressed, but it wasn’t anything terrible either. So my trepidation with The Rundown was probably warranted. I mean, it’s an action movie in the jungle. Starring The Rock. Need I really say more?
I didn’t see a trailer for the film, but I had heard good buzz in the past week or so about this film – and that started to pique my interest. And Christopher Walken as the bad guy? What’s the problem, here?
Turns out the film is actually quite a hoot. There were a bunch of times where the editing was severly undercutting (yes, that’s a pun -har har) the action on screen – it was too fast to see what was going on. But still, there were good stunts, somewhat intense action segments, good fights, and surprisingly, plenty of humor. What really took me by surprise, though, was the fact that not only could The Rock act, he had range of emotion! Very expressive eyes, too.
The plot is fairly simple: The Rock is a professional “retriever”. He wants out (so he can start his own restaurant), and so he has to do “one last job”. (Of course.) His mission: go to Brazil and retrieve his boss’s son (Seann William Scott). Only thing is, Seann is on the trail of “El Gato”, a legendary golden idol, and he wants to get it to give it to a museum. Christopher Walken is the evil head of a gold mining town that wants the idol cause, well, it’s gold. And this other chick wants it because she’s the head of the rebels and it can “free her people”. Or something like that. It’s not the best plot, but it’s enough to keep the pacing of the film moving.
The score, by Harry Gregson-Williams, didn’t really stand out as anything superb, but it had some nice guitar bits, and was overall satisfactory. Running under 2 hours long, this film is certainly worth your time at a matinee if you wanna check it out.