“The Rundown” will leave you breathless! I say this not only because it may very well be true, but also because that is precisely the sort of easily digestible nugget that might get plastered all over the movie ads (which would make my mother very proud of me). But where was I? Ah, yes, “The Rundown.” A rollicking, action-adventure tailor-made for Hollywood’s contempo action hero, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson,” who could very well be the next Schwarzenegger — if only he’d quit being such a decent actor.
The Rock stars as Beck, a teddy bear in a grizzly’s body, who makes his living as a “retrieval expert” for a surly Los Angeles bookie. Beck hates guns because when he uses them, “bad things happen to people … really bad things.” So he gets the job done with his bare hands, as we discover right out of the gate when Beck pounds the stuffing out of a pro football team in a nightclub. In a year in which there is no shortage of high-voltage cinematic action, this balletic brawl ranks as the most exciting sequence to date. Watch it, and you’ll surely want to jump up and shout “Go, The Rock, go!”
But our hero wants out —– wants to trade in his brass knuckles for some stainless steel cook-ware and open his own restaurant. His boss, Walker, makes him a deal: Complete one last mission, collect a big reward, and retire to the kitchen. So Beck journeys to the jungles of Brazil to retrieve Walker’s wise-ass wayward son, Travis (Seann William Scott) who dropped out of Stanford to pursue a long-lost Amazonian treasure. Beck locates Travis almost immediately, and they begin exchanging what ultimately amounts to a glut of not-so-witty jabs. Imagine Stifler riffing with Rambo. But director Peter Berg overcomes the dialogical failings and Scott’s incessant overacting by inserting Rosario Dawson as Mariana, a smoking-hot bartender/freedom fighter, and the irresistible Christopher Walken as Hatcher, an unstable despot who enslaves the natives to toil in his diamond mines.
Soon, Beck, Travis and Mariana are working together to find the extremely-valuable Gato Diablo idol while being hotly pursued by Hatcher and his henchmen. This entertaining game of cat-and-mouse, highlighted by some hilarious bon mots courtesy of Walken, gives way to an ultimate showdown during which Beck finally disregards his no-guns policy — a dubious contrivance to begin with — and blasts the hell out of a whole slew of baddies while barely breaking a sweat. Even more impressive than his expert marksmanship is Beck’s uncanny ability to kill without bloodshed, thus preserving the film’s invaluable PG-13 rating. Now that’s what I call a real action hero. (Rated PG-13 for adventure violence and some crude dialogue. Running time: 104 minutes.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 26, 2003. Read the original PDF.