Rampage is
a movie in which a giant ape, wolf, and sea creature destroy a large city and
the Rock has to stop them.
When it comes to delivering on its premise, few
movies do a better job than Rampage. It's hard to adapt a video game
into a movie, which I covered a lot for Tomb Raider last
month. Rampage does pretty well by it. It helps that the game has a limited
premise: three monsters destroy a city. Matching the mechanics isn't very hard.
However, Rampage works very hard to get to that premise. The plot is stupid, but it fits. There's an evil company, Energyrne, run by the sister-brother pair of Claire and Brett Wyden (Malin Akerman and Jake Lacy). They are doing genetic experiments that increase growth and aggression in animals. Those experimental chemicals find their way to an ape, and wolf, and an alligator. The Wydens set up a homing beacon for animals in the middle of Chicago, and - boom - there you have it: giant monsters attacking a city. To give it more of a linear narrative, Dwayne Johnson is introduced as an ape whisperer who works with the eventually giant ape, George. George is given a personality to make the whole thing feel a little less anonymous. Naomie Harris shows up to deliver some exposition as the scientist who developed the technology. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is there as the point man for a shadow government agency in charge of monitoring weird science experiments. They successfully streamline and populate the story enough to work like any other disaster movie. Despite its video game origins, Rampage most reminded me of Battleship in how hard it sets up the game's structure. It's a little less strained in Rampage but no less transparent.
I don't know how to describe the tone of this movie. It's the kind of movie in which the CEO of the evil corporation has a Rampage arcade game in her office that's never mentioned. It's not quite camp, but it sure has a lot of strange levity. Both Akerman and Lacy are taken care of in darkly comedic ways. Joe Manganiello is set up as the evil special ops counterpart to The Rock's character, but he's wiped out at cameo speed. George is given the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy. The Rock might as well be the fourth monster in the movie. He treats things like gunshot wounds and ziptied hands like minor inconveniences. At one point, he and George go 2-on-2 against the wolf and alligator. Mind you, this is after entire army platoons have been wiped out by them. It's all treated serious the whole time, but it also embraces how over the top it all is.
Not all of it works. The first hour is built entirely on contrivance. The humor is a little broad and inserted clunkily a lot of places. Since George communicates through sign language, too much of the movie is The Rock translating the signing so the movie doesn't have to use subtitles. I can't decide if I liked the video game physics of all the fighting. It was a weird feeling seeing major Chicago landmarks toppling. I think I'm still in the early 2000s mentality of collapsing skyscrapers as the third rail of action movies.
Dwayne Johnson is hitting peak Wesley Snipes level of swagger but without losing his likability. It seems like every movie he's in now has to include a scene in which a woman is swooning over him and he's unaffected by it. It turns out that he is to animal rescue what Liam Nesson in Taken is to international hostage rescue. He really has built his brand so than nothing seems too superhuman for him to accomplish, and that's a lot of fun in a movie like this. Naomie Harris doesn't get a lot to do, but she carries herself like she belongs in the world of the film. She isn't quite a love interest, but it's nevertheless nice to see Johnson paired with someone his own age rather than a 20-something. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is having an absolute blast in this. He takes on a cowboy in a business suit character and plays up every bit of it. I'd like to see him show up as a frenemy in more of Johnson's movies. Akerman and Lacy do exactly what is asked of them. Akerman is a token, evil, CEO mastermind. Lacy is her panicky sidekick. It's not a highlight of either of their careers. It's not like someone else could've improved on the roles though.
Look, Rampage isn't a great movie, and it doesn't try to be one. It's The Rock fighting monsters. If that's what you are in the mood for, this doesn't disappoint. If that isn't what you want to see, then this obviously isn't something you need to track down.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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