The modern action film genre has gotten increasingly tired as of late. So I was surprised to find that The Rundown is a rare treat: an action movie that actually retained my interest until the end credits.
Beck (The Rock) is a “retrieval expert” who works for Billy Walker (William Lucking). Beck doesn’t want to be a bounty hunter forever, so he’s sent on “one last job” which will secure him enough money to retire from the job and open a restaurant. (Aren’t action heroes always wanting to do something else?) However, he’s sent to the Amazon to retrieve Walker’s son, Travis (Seann William Scott), who’s hiding out in a Brazilian mining town.
Once he’s in Brazil, Beck discovers that Travis is on the trail of “El Diablo Gato”, a piece of ancient treasure thought to be worth millions. The mining town is run by Hatcher (Christopher Walken), who employs the townspeople as indentured slaves. Hatcher believes that, if the treasure is real, it’s from his property and therefore belongs to him. The trick is finding it and he needs Travis around to do that. So, Hatcher steps in to prevent Beck from leaving with Travis before he finds the treasure. Travis, on the other hand, doesn’t want to leave before he finds the treasure either. Further confusing things is a band of rebels fighting Hatcher for their freedom, who’d love to have the treasure’s millions to ensure their freedom from the crookedness of people like Hatcher.
Director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) uses slow-motion, unique camera angles, and a bit (thankfully, just a bit) of digital enhancement to make the action in The Rundown jump off the screen. The fighting, especially in a scene with Beck taking on the rebel’s best fighters, is top-notch — rivaling some of the best wire-fu scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The Rock has a very dynamic screen presence and fairly good comedic timing. If this film and The Scorpion King are any indication, he’s now a bankable action star.
Christopher Walken, who has admitted he’s been in movies that he himself hasn’t even seen, is about the only real liability here. He looks extremely tired (and oddly misshapen at times) and delivers a performance equal to that of someone on Thorazine. There’s a scene where he tries to explain his anger at losing Travis to Beck by explaining the concept of the Tooth Fairy to his soldiers. It’s a glaring misstep in a movie that, overall, is otherwise tightly written.
The Rundown is a lighthearted action comedy that doesn’t ask you to make gigantic suspensions of disbelief to reach its climax. It doesn’t keep you in the dark to make something unexpected seem exciting. It just delivers entertainment with a lot of explosions, fight scenes, and a few chuckles. That’s all it should do and it succeeds where plenty of other similar movies have failed miserably.
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
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