I don’t know why Hollywood acts like making a decent movie based on a video game is the equivalent to a torture trap created by Jigsaw. After the complete bore that was Tomb Raider, the next Hollywood cash grab on the queue is Rampage.
If you don’t remember Rampage, it was basically a game where a giant wolf, gorilla, and lizard destroy a bunch of buildings in various cities. So it took FOUR people to write a movie that makes its own plot irrelevant so fast, they could have just started the film at the last 30 minutes and it would have made just as much sense. But hey, The Rock is in the film and we haven’t gotten sick of him yet so this has to be good right? Right?
Dwayne Johnson stars as Davis Okoye, a man who is the head of an anti-poaching unit in San Diego. Davis doesn’t like people because he has seen the horrors they can do. Because a few a-holes poached animals for ashtrays, he no longer trusts the human race, because that makes sense. After an experiment in space goes wrong, three canisters of green mist fall from the sky and infect an albino Silverback, a grey wolf, and an American crocodile turning them into giant near invincible beasts. They all end up in Chicago for some reason and it is there that Davis and some other woman (Naomie Harris) he met five minutes ago must, I don’t know find a cure or something…it doesn’t matter.
The Rock’s old catchphrase use to go “IT DOESN’T MATTER” and it seems like that’s the attitude the writers had in the script. I mean the story is somewhat competent at the beginning, but by the time we get to the last act, you realize that everything they had built and set up didn’t mean a damn thing, so why did they even bother in the first place? There is a story about an evil corporation who wants to do something and puts the entire city of Chicago in danger for no reason in a very poorly thought out plan and that’s about where the plot ends.
Everyone outside of Rock is just there to advance the story and nothing else. Naomie Harris is there to find a cure that doesn’t actually exist, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is there to be the guy who is conveniently at the right place at the right time even when the lead characters had a 30-minute head start on him. Malin Åkerman is there to be evil and pretty much everyone else is either there to be a cartoon level coward or just get eaten by a monster to add to the body count.
Another big gripe I had was the film’s need to be funny at times where it didn’t need to be funny. Case in point, there is a really dramatic scene with a mother finding her child after the city has been totaled playing super serious music in the background and then ten seconds later a giant gorilla is pantomiming two people having sex because it’s funny. Like, am I suppose to take this film seriously? Or laugh, because the heroes are laughing like it’s no big deal while the police are in the background trying to recover the thousands of dead bodies from the trillions of property damage all around them.
If Rock can no sell a bullet wound for 30 minutes then don’t expect me to take this seriously. Rampage is a mess of a story and it doesn’t even offer enough CGI destruction that is probably the only reason you went to watch this in the first place. Rampage is just as bad you thought it was in the trailer and it still might be better than Skyscraper.
1/5
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