Rampage
“Rampage” is exactly what I expected out of it, but not exactly what I hoped. Based on the video game of the same name, I hoped it would be a goofy and deliriously fun B-movie, but unfortunately, they felt the need to try and make an emotional connection, and actually explain things too much, that gets in the way of things here. The 107-minute running time feels like two hours before it gets to the real destruction, and it’s a damn shame, because there are some legitimately silly, entertaining things in this movie.
Let’s start with three of the actors not named Dwayne Johnson. The first two are Malin Ackerman and Jake Lacy as Claire and Brett Wyden, the brother-sister pair that owns the evil corporation doing genetic editing experiments that started with one scientist (Naomie Harris) trying to save her dying brother, but has resulted in mutations of nature that are capable of mass destruction and aggression, starting with the space station where the company is having to do their experiments because the resulting chemical has been labeled as a “weapon of mass destruction.” Let’s unpack that last sentence, and all the craziness contained within it. That is a marvelously absurd setup for a movie, and I’m not going to lie, Ackerman and Lacy are just the villains for the movie that promises. They might as well have “bad guy” stamped on their forehead, because the actors do “evil CEO” acting as well as you can hope for in this type of movie, and it’s crazy fun, and I love how they get it, in the end. Fitting absurdity.
The third actor is Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a government spook. You’ve seen him in the trailers for the film talking to Johnson and Harris, and if you thought he was going to be the villain in this film, you weren’t the only one. But he’s kind of straddling the fences, and Morgan’s demeanor in the role is kind of intoxicating to watch. Like Ackerman and Lacy, he’s playing his character to 11, and defines it through a weird cowboy drawl that is kind of hilarious. This is an actor making the most of the lunacy around him, and creating a performance you seriously cannot take your eyes of, and it’s kind of beautiful.
By comparison against Ackerman, Lacy and Morgan, Johnson is painfully straight-faced and sincere in this movie, and while I think you needed that from his character, who has had a connection with George- the albino gorilla who gets infected with the genetic experiment, causing it to go on the titular rampage with a wolf and a crocodile- since he rescued him from poachers, it feels too sincere for a movie where we really just want to see these science experiments run amok reek some havoc in the city. The bulk of the action lands in the last third of the movie, meaning we have a LOT of “plot” going on before that, and this movie, arguably, needed less story and more action. It’s an entertaining diversion, and director Brad Peyton delivers some energetic CGI action in that last third, but this just isn’t as fun as it should be in a popcorn movie kind of way. This feels like a movie built from lesser parts of better movies, save for some wild supporting performances that can’t quite make up for everything else.
