Movie Review: The Rundown

During my drowsy, jet lagged state on Sunday I had a vague recollection of going out for a movie with Jo and the others. Thankfully, I did. Not so thankfully, we decided to watch The Rundown. I admit, I was psyched to catch this one, since it got several favourable reviews. Unfortunately for this reviewer, it didn't turn out quite as favourable, notably because I missed the single biggest warning sign that this would be a B-Movie: the poster.

Yup, that's right, folks. The poster looked like one of those early 80s-late 90s direct to video efforts filmed in South America on a shoestring budget and more often than not featuring a hunky protagonist, lots of explosions, dubbed in voices and a boob shot (or three). But then again, far be it from me to judge a book by its cover, so without any trepidation (this IS the Rock by the way) I took my place on the house seats and prepared myself.

I should have done more preparing.

In a nutshell, The Rundown is not a bad movie at all. It's got a hunky, funny hero, very good action and a nice evil villain. Where it fails, ultimately is in the story and its execution. It starts simple enough: Beck (Dwayne Johnson) is a retrieval expert. You know, the kind that beats you up seven ways from Sunday when you don't pay your dues. Except that he's actually a very nice guy (Cliche Alert!) and dreams of opening his own restaurant one day. His boss promises to give him the payout of his dreams if Beck would retrieve his son from Brazil. What starts out as a routine retrieval quickly turns complicated as Beck gets tangled with an evil industralist-cum-gold miner (Christopher Walken) and his various Cliche Henchmen on the quest to find a mystical artifact made of gold. Oh, and there's a smoky, seductive bartender, rebel fighters, monkeys, funny fruit..you get the picture. Before I go any further, let's take a second to list down all the cliches used in the making of the film.

1) The Hero is a goodnatured, antiviolent kinda guy who gets trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time.
2) The sidekick (Sean Michael Scott) is small and irritating. Amazingly, he's not black.
3) The beautiful bartender also happens to be the beautiful leader of the rebellion.
4) The Evil Industrialist employs a small army that also includes (here it comes) not one but THREE whip-toting henchmen, a jeep with a machine gun, a buggy and several motorbikes.
5) The Hero and the Sidekick search for the fabled missing Doodad of Gold.
6) There is fighting involving whips cracking chairs.
7) Near the end, the rebel leader lifts the Doodad up to the cheers of her people.

Sigh. There's more I can list, but I don't have the resources these people have, so I'm gonna keep it short. The Rundown starts off well, has plenty of well choreographed action to boot, and an exceptionally cast villain (Chris Walken for God's sake). Where it starts to falter is when it tries to tell too many stories at once, and doesn't quite manage to flesh out its characters (however, it IS an action movie, so I won't be so harsh). What I WILL be harsh on is the fact that it falls back on using every conceivable jungle movie cliche known to man! That in itself hurt what I felt could have been a really good action vehicle for the Rock (who is quite comfortable in the role, btw).

Anyway, The Rundown is an okay movie, and gives the Rock a chance to flex his ermm..acting muscles. It could have been better, but then there are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon. Give it a try, I promise you'll like the Monkey part.

Ash.ox gives The Rundown a 2.5 out of 5