Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
Rampage
(New Line Cinema)
By Lucas Allen
One month after “Tomb Raider,” we have another movie trying to break the video game movie curse. The original arcade game “Rampage” was an 80s gem where you play as giant monsters destroy buildings and eat people.
This film tries to add layers in a new story while bringing the same entertainment value you can expect from the latest monster movie trend.
It’s not the summer season yet and we already have a movie that doesn’t require much intelligence to enjoy.
At the San Diego Zoo, Davis (Dwayne Johnson) is a primatologist who’s more interested in his ape friends than actual people. His best friend in the world is a rare albino gorilla he names George after rescuing it from poachers.
One day, the ape mauls a bear to death and he realizes that George is getting bigger and more aggressive. While George is being held in confinement, a geneticist named Kate (Naomie Harris) knows what is causing George to grow. She used to work for a company run by the evil Claire (Malin Akerman) and her little brother Brett (Jack Lacy) who stole her research in redesigning DNA for their illegal secret experiment dubbed Project: Rampage.
George is taken away by the government agency OGA. Turns out as explained by special agent Harvey (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) two other giant monsters, a wolf named Ralph and a gator named Lizzie are on the loose.
Meanwhile, Claire and Brett try to cover up their experiments after an accident that caused the problem to begin with. Soon enough, the monsters converge on Chicago for a destructive battle and it’s up to Davis and Kate to find the cure for George.
If you were sold by the trailers mixing The Rock with giant monsters, then you might enjoy the silly fun the movie provides. But be prepared for a moviethat shoves crazy science down your jugular. Sure the giant monsters part is acceptable enough but when you add DNA redesign, sonar and implausible physics to the concoction, you now have a recipe for something outlandish. Not to mention, opening the movie with a space station explosion makes this a slight step above “Geostorm.”
After surviving the first two thirds of exposition dumping, you finally get to the third act that is supposed to be as exciting as advertised. Unfortunately, it goes on for a long time with a never-ending display of destruction and carnage that makes the last act of “Man of Steel” look like the last act of “The Avengers.”
If that wasn’t enough just when you thought it’s all over, they have the nerve to add some crude humor to the dramatic debris. No matter how you feel about it, maybe a slight editing change or two would’ve make it more bearable. Johnson does his usual best with the dumb material he’s working with, using both humor and charisma. His character’s relationship with George is supposed to be the film’s heart, but it’s bogged down by the movie’s tonal issues. Worse than that, the villains are some of the most poorly-written and very transparent characters put on screen that you have to contend with before the climax. One of them gets a satisfying death scene, but it doesn’t take away the fact that they’re one cliché away from having a twirling mustache.
The only great thing about the cast is Morgan shedding his Negan character from “The Walking Dead” and adding a southern draw for his scenery-chewing performance, which is both hilarious and entertaining.
“Rampage” should be a crowd-pleaser, but its layers of stupidity outweigh its intentions and falls flat on its face.
This could be seen as place holder until the new Avengers movie start taking over theaters everywhere, but you’ll wish the Marvel heroes come in and teach this film’s cast and crew a lesson in proper destruction filmmaking. If your theater happens to have one of the old game cabinets, play that game instead.
THE MOVIE’S RATING: PG-13 (for sequences of violence, action and destruction, brief language, and crude gestures) THE CRITIC’S RATING: 2 Stars (Out of Four)
