Action Adventure
RAMPAGE
CAST:Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Malin Akerman
DIRECTION: Brad Peyton

 

‘Rampage’ is one of those sci-fi action flicks where Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson saves the world from destruction. Here he teams up with his ‘San Andreas’ director, Brad Peyton, to dish out a cinematic mayhem of massive proportion. As a genre piece, the movie is happy to remain in the margins and never comes close to stand apart from the likes of ‘Godzilla’ or ‘King Kong’. Its sole ambition is to let computer-gen­erated imagery (CGI) overtake storytelling. Take it as a guilty plea­sure and you might actually enjoy the well-crafted visual effect spec­tacles, but take it as a serious enter­tainment and you might sit through the movie scratching your head over the film’s unimaginative story and thin characterization. Dwayne Johnson plays Davis Okoye, a former anti-poaching spe­cial force operative, now working at San Diego Wildlife Sanctuary as lead primatologist looking after the reha­bilitation of rescued gorillas. Among the pack, an albino gorilla named George is pals with Davis. We see the two exchange teasing remarks in signs and fist bumping each other. Then through an unfortunate chain of events, George gets exposed to a container that happened to store samples from a doomed experiment at a space lab. Overnight, the expo­sure alters George’s DNA and he grows into a King Kong-sized gorilla with anger issues. Soon he’s wreak­ing havoc in the sanctuary.

 

George isn’t the only genetically mutated animal. There are others as well—a crocodile and a wolf, for instance. The military wants to shoot them down and the tech com­pany behind the failed experiment wants to capture the animals to recover genetic samples.

 

In the wake of all this, Davis wants to save his friend George before he goes on a rampage and destroys everything in his way. In his quest, Davis is aided by a genetic scientist (Naomie Harris) and a federal agent (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

 

Though flawed, the movie is eas­ily watchable because it doesn’t take itself seriously. The charac­ters are deliberately simpleminded and stripped off any depth. For instance, we never get an inkling of Davis’ social life and he remains a macho from the beginning to the end, without changing much. The writing is so expositional that characters will overstate the obvi­ous. As I pointed out earlier, director Peyton is here to deliver carnage and explosion, not a story that examines the human folly to mess with nature. For him, character development is a distraction and he makes no effort at highbrow art; he’s here to churn mass popular cinematic senti­ments with ‘The Rock’ in it, and he is moderately successful.

 

Speaking of actors, Dwayne John­son is his usual gung-ho self. His character graph is trite, and the story doesn’t ask for much save for his beefy stature and straight-face. Naomie Harris is given an emotional backstory with a tragedy involving her brother. But the film treats these emotional beats as speed bumps and instead cuts to the well-de­signed action sequences. Jeffrey Dean Morgan of ‘The Walking Dead’ makes his presence felt as the wise­cracking federal agent, who turns blind eye to Davis’ questionable ways to rescue George just because Davis saved his life.

 

You don’t go to a movie starring ‘The Rock’ expecting it to be an eye-opening cerebral drama. And ‘Rampage’ doesn’t sweat hard to be that kind of film. It is a pure campy mixed-bag of action and carnage with a mechanical plot. One-time viewing only.