Rampage comes courtesy of Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. and New Line Cinema, and it will attempt to keep up Tomb Raider's momentum in terms of halfway decent video game adaptations that perform relatively well worldwide. Yes, Tomb Raider stumbled
in North America, but it has earned $265 million worldwide on a $94m
budget, which means that WB and MGM might have a franchise on their
hands. While the Dwayne Johnson/Noami Harris action fantasy hopes to do better across the board, but the
Brad Peyton-directed/Beau Flynn-produced monster movie cost around
$120m, so it doesn't necessarily have to break records to break even.
Yes, the film is based on an old video game. But for most moviegoers, Rampage will be sold as “Dwayne Johnson Versus Giant Monsters: The Movie.” The buzz has been somewhat lowkey, a victim of Ready Player One's breakout success and the non-stop coverage for Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War. Of course, this film was supposed to come out on April 20, but it moved up a week after Walt Disney's Avengers moved to April 27. It still gets two weeks before the MCU flick, but A) it now has one less week between it and Ready Player One and B) it kinda got blindsided by the blow-out success of Paramount/Viacom Inc.'s A Quiet Place.
But Johnson is a genuine draw for kids and adults, and the film's
core concept (watch giant animals trash a major city) has a core appeal
whether or not you're aware of the 1980's arcade game. Tracking suggests
an over/under $35 million weekend but San Andreas vastly
overperformed three years ago. Will lightning strike twice for the
newest Johnson/Peyton/Flynn big city disaster flick? If so, I'd bet your
left arm that Peyton ends up directing Johnson's Black Adam movie. But that's a conversation for Monday.
The Review:
Rampage may be, by default, the best video game movie ever made. Oh sure, I have a soft spot for Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (fight me...) and you probably have a particular affection for one of the Resident Evil movies or the first Mortal Kombat, but the sub-genre that is the video game adaptation isn't exactly overflowing with critical gems. Rampage is
a solid, entertaining and relatively well-made action fantasy that
works whether or not you've ever played the 1980's arcade game. Like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, it is a movie first and an IP adaption second.
This follows just a month after MGM and WB's pretty decent Tomb Raider reboot, which features too much origin story/daddy issues but also a terrific star turn from Alicia Vikander
as Lara Croft amid some excellent action scenes. With all of the talk
about how Warner Bros. is struggling with their DC Comics superhero
adaptations, I once again reiterate that they are more than Batman and
Harry Potter. The Dream Factory just put out two pretty decent video
game movies in a month. I think they may deserve a Nobel Prize or a
Medal of Freedom for that.
Written by Ryan Engle, Carlton Cuse, Ryan J. Condal and Adam
Sztykiel, the film takes its time getting to the main event. This allows
around an hour of character development, plotting and set-up so that we
actually somewhat care about the lives at stake and the fate of at
least one of the big animals. Moreover, by holding back just a little,
the last act of the film can afford to go gonzo-bananas in terms of
watching giant creatures wreaking kauji-ish havoc upon Chicago. And to
think, Chicago had just recovered from the horrific Decepticon attack of
2011.
That's not to say the film doesn't maintain a brisk pace, because it
will absolutely hold your kids’ attention. The opening (a frightening
prologue more akin to Life or Event Horizon) leads to
the usual character intros and a few exciting (and varied) action
sequences. Just be warned, there are some decent scares and moments of
monster movie violence in the first two-thirds of the flick. I would
argue it’s just violent and scary enough to make your kids think like
they’re getting away with something, but this is closer to Jurassic World than Mighty Joe Young.
Dwayne Johnson plays a variation of “the greatest person in the
world,” but with less arrogance and more self-depreciation compared to Baywatch.
Davis Okoye is the head of an anti-poaching unit who gets along best
with animals. When his best buddy, a silverback gorilla named George,
gets infected with a mysterious experiment that turns him very big and
very aggressive, Davis teams up with Naomi Harris’ Dr. Kate Caldwell.
The primatologist and the geneticist race against time before George and
two other animals (a giant crocodile nicknamed Lizzie and a giant wolf
dubbed Ralph) go on a… drumroll… rampage.
Rampage puts most of its emotional stock in the friendship
between Davis and George, and the emphasis pays off. Johnson and his
gorilla pal (played by Jason Liles via motion-capture) share genuine
chemistry. Harris is arguably something of a tag-along girl, but she
gets her character beats and never devolves into a mere love interest.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan steals the show as a profoundly cynical government
agent who might not necessarily be a villain. Malin Ackerman and Jake
Lacey are the (amusing) corporate baddies, and their sub-plot mostly
takes place within a single interior location.
None of these characters are going into the history books, but
everyone is having a good time and they are colorful enough that they
qualify as entertainment in between the monster mash sequences. And when
the payoff does come, Rampage turns into a stunningly
big-scale disaster-porn adventure. Sure, most of the city is evacuated
before the big smackdown, but it’s still a heck of a thing and I was
genuinely impressed by the scale of the onscreen monster attack footage.
Simply put, if you came for the “rampage,” you’ll get plenty of that
and more.
Rampage never forgets to tell its story and keep its core
characters front-and-center amid the chaos. It does, however,
occasionally falls into that Transformers trap where we’d
rather see what’s going on outside while our heroes run around a lab
trying to save the day. The first half of the film keeps things
relatively intense, again more akin to a Jurassic Park movie
than a gee-whiz adventure. We even get some dark backstory for both of
our core heroes, as Davies is clearly traumatized by what he saw and
what he did in defense of the animals.
The second half gets a little campier since the big-scale carnage
isn’t as conventionally scary as animals picking off soldiers in the
dark. Not necessarily knowing how they would stretch the budget, I was
pleasantly surprised to see lots of clearly-lit and coherently edited,
broad daylight monster attack set pieces during the third act pay-off.
There are plenty of Easter Eggs for fans of the game, none of which pull
you out of the story. The core plot is exactly reversed from the game,
as it’s not humans turning into giant monsters but animals turning into
giant monsters.
Rampage offers a big dose of “what you came for” amid a
decent enough story with colorful characters who qualify as good
company. Johnson is cast-to-type, Harris is game and Morgan is having a
scenery-chewing blast (I will not divulge his best line of dialogue, but
it concerns explaining the parameters of his job). Peyton again shows a
steady and unshowy hand at the helm. I won’t argue that Journey 2, San Andreas and Rampage are high art, but he’s very good at making this kind of big-scale movie. Out of mercy, I won’t mention The Revenge of Kitty Galore.
By default, and also by design, Rampage is probably the most
objectively good video game-based movie we’ve ever had. It works both
as a somewhat faithful adaptation of the source material but prioritizes
being a good and splashy kid-friendly adventure over rigid source
fidelity. It’s got a fun cast, an unexpectedly generous amount of
animal-vs-building carnage and works both as an intense monster movie
and a campy creature feature. It’s not an exact comparison, but if Avengers: Infinity War is The Phantom Menace than Rampage is The Mummy. And, yeah, I darn well mean that as a compliment.
vdj78j
No comments:
Post a Comment