It’s official. I’m only calling him Dwayne Johnson. The Rock is no more.
Lions, tigers and bears oh my! Well I guess, a monkey, a wolf, and a crocodile. Throw them in the Windy City make them 50 feet tall and you have the newest video game adaptation Rampage. According to rotten tomatoes it is the best rated video game movie ever, I know that’s not saying to much but a wins a win. For Dwayne Johnson – the King of the box-office he just keeps winning. I had so much fun with this movie, and will continue to support any project that DJ is involved with.
Imagine just walking down the street on a sunny day in Chicago when three larger than life animals come hurling towards you looking for their afternoon snack. Yes, I’m well aware this is a silly premise but as much as I like reviewing movies based on their technical achievements or story telling. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit back, relax and completely turn your brain off. It helps when you enjoy the movie you’re watching, but people can take movies way to seriously these days. Life is about having fun and enjoying things and movies are for the most part made for entertainment purposes. Is the acting in stupendous? No. Is the movie well written? Absolutely not. Will you crush the largest popcorn and soda while enjoying the heck out of Rampage. Hell yes.
So when an evil company Energyne cooks up some secret genetic altering, gene manipulating sauce in space and things go haywire, three canisters containing this stuff fall to Earth. Three unsuspecting animals come into contact with it. A wolf on Wyoming, and crocodile in the Everglades and George an Albino ape in the San Diego Zoo. George is best friends with Davis Okoye (DJ) and when George starts to grow at uncontrollable rate, well Davis gets a little concerned. Enter Claire (Naomie Harris) a once employee of Energyne. She works along side Davis and a government worker Henry Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) to try and stop these animals from essentially destroying the planet. There you go, that’s the entire plot. It’s pretty simple, big animals running amuck and us trying and failing miserably to stop them. I like all three of these people, and I actually thought they worked really well together. I would love to see DJ and JDM side by side again. Something about them seemed to click and I really enjoyed that aspect of this movie. There are other human characters at play here, but they are the definition of disposable. The villains are pretty much cartoons, and in terms of the human side of the story the weakest part of the film.
The stars of the movie are our three larger than life animals. They really steal the show and when they are finally on screen together you really can’t look away. The last 40 mins is just a fun ride. I thought the effects were pretty impressive for the animals, other aspects not so much, but watching a giant ape and DJ fight side by side is just fun to watch. Why nitpick all the little things or the issues I knew this movie was going to have. It’s a video game move – they have a terrible track record. It’s just suppose to be fun, so why base it off anything other than that? The movie isn’t perfect, I wouldn’t even say it’s a great movie, but I had a ton of fun and at the end of the day, I think that’s what they want. I know that’s what DJ wants from anyone who goes. It’s got some really great comedic moments, plenty of destruction and Dwayne Johnson. The movie is called Rampage expect a bunch of stuff exploding and a ton of chaos. This is actually something I would like to see more of, because for what it’s trying to be, I think they accomplished their goal. Thinking about it, this very well could be one of my favourite Dwayne Johnson movies.
Check ya later
Nate’s Movie Tour Reviews – Rampage = 70/100