Mammoth Month of Moviepass #2: RAMPAGE

Here's the first thing I should note about the Dwayne Johnson/Giant Gorilla/Giant Wolf/Giant Crocodile Rampage - this is to differentiate it from two previous movies from the past few decades with that title, one by a reputable auteur (William Friedkin's film, 1987) and not so reputable (Uwe Boll's from 2009, also I believe inspired by a *different* video game called Rampage, and... his actually was one of his few movies I don't dislike passionately) - if ten year-old Jack was reviewing this, he'd say it was a pretty good fun time at the movies.

Perhaps I had (no, I definitely had) less discerning tastes, but I can remember watching just barely passable Hollywood action stuff like this through my childhood (Congo and Volcano come to mind as movies I watched more than once and feel some shame about doing today).  They had spectacle and tried just a little to have some heart... I say try, not necessarily the same as succeed.  Rampage is another "okay, that's a thing, move along" action extravaganza that tries to insert a little heart into its narrative that is driven by a director who knows how to get a lot of actors to speak the dialog as written (some of them pretty good, and some perfunctory as fuck, as is the dialog), and has a finale that seems to go on way too long.

What I mean by that last statement is, there aren't quite enough action set pieces to really justify how bloated the finale act is when all of the creatures get to Chicago (summoned by one of those Magic Sensory Beepers that, as explained in the film, were originally designed for bats but the main evil chick, played unfortunately without an evil accent by Malin Akerman, really liked having it around or something), and what seems like the end gets elongated because, well, Dwayne Johnson has gotta do what the Rock does and wield some giant fucking guns at some giant animals (the giant spikes they've grown... that's cool, you do you, alien-mutated super-beasts).

Or... I may have just been numbed by that point, and while 115 minutes doesn't seem long for this kind of movie, it really is; most Godzilla movies back in the day were 90 minutes, at most 100, and were out and goodbye.  But here there's that same level of exposition the characters give to one another as in all of the typical monster movies - Johnson as the Primatologist-cum-ex-Poacher-super-soldier and Naomie Harris (jeez, this is what you do after Moonlight? okie dokie) as the ex-co-worker scientist from the Evil Akerman lab do a lot of it, but there's also military guys and the Jeffrey Dean Morgan character, who seems to be having the time of his life playing this one-note character, and that's fine - and it feels like there's just too much of it.  Meanwhile there's only two other major set pieces before Chicago, one involving a plane (admittedly, a better version of what we got in last year's The Mummy, so fine), and the other an all-too-brief scene introducing the giant wolf and sorta wasting Joe Manganiello (no, really, see him in the Magic Mike movies, the dude knows how to put on a show!) 

What I mean to say is, I'm not sure if the movie fully earns that final Chicago scene; it may have been the four writers (one of which is Carlton Cuse, formerly of Lost) couldn't think of more carnage the creatures could leave in their wake while getting Johnson/Harris to the big final section, but I wish they had.  Maybe it wouldn't have felt like fatigue getting there, but this isn't to say that's the only problem of the movie.  While I enjoyed probably most of all the scenes between George (the Gorilla, probably the best actor in the movie), and Johnson's Davis, they feel front-loaded to the beginning of the movie and then at the end in that giant fight in the city.  There's such a rush to get from one scene and one splash of exposition to the next that one may almost neglect to notice that there's a RAMPAGE ARCADE GAME in the background of Akerman's office (though I certainly didn't miss the rather odd product placement... during the final battle for... Dave & Buster's?)

I can find some decent things to say about this, and it's not unwatchable, but at the same time there's no real passion or anything to engage me with any of the characters; though Davis works as a typical action lead, he only works best with George, and there's only a few of those scenes that stand out (I'm almost surprised too he lets what happen what he does on the plane - did he know then that, spoiler, don't care, that George was indestructible then? shrug).  Brad Peyton can keep a scene not moving, but there's nothing to it that makes it stand out.  When people praise the likes of Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro as being the best makers of these kinds of gigantic popcorn movies, there's a reason for that - or, I should say, when someone makes a remark like "eh, Ready Player One has it's problems, but I'd take an okay Spielberg over a dozen other Hollywood action movies", they're referring to something like Rampage.

So.... yeah, the Uwe Boll Rampage is... *better* than this one?  Whodathunk?