Kino Lorber
Hollywood had been circling Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson from the moment his WWF character exploded in popularity in 1998.
After a tongue in cheek guest star spot on Star Trek: Voyager, Stephen Sommers cast him in a glorified cameo for his big budget sequel The Mummy Returns. That led to a Conan inspired TheMizspin-off, The Scorpion King, where Johnson was given the highest salary ever for a first time star.
After The Scorpion King’s modest success, The Rock was attached to The Rundown (known internationally as Welcome to the Jungle) and, twenty years removed, there is something charming about watching a film that was clearly designed to make an actor into a star instead of launching a cinematic universe.
The Rundown is a very safe film: not only does it pair Johnson with American Pie’s Seann William Scott to take advantage of the wrestler’s well developed comic instincts, but also, utilizes a script that is plagiarized heavily inspired from Martin Brest’s 1988 classic Midnight Run.
Director Peter Berg was, at least at this point in his career, motivated to move past the misfire of his directorial debut Very Bad Things, and the legendary Christopher Walken was tapped to play the heavy, complete with a strange monologue about the “Tooth Fairy” that seems to play right into his stints on SNL where he often poked fun at his own on screen persona.
The Rundown casts The Rock as Beck, a bounty hunter working to pay off his debts to Walker (William Lucking) a gangster, and hoping to get out of the business and open a restaurant. Beck is sent on the proverbial “one last job” to the deep Amazon to retrieve Walker’s son, Travis (Seann William Scott) who is searching for a legendary golden artifact known as El Gato. Beck just wants to get in and get out but when the two men reach the remote jungle town of El Dorado, they find it under the control of mining baron Hatcher (Christopher Walken), who exploits the locals for labor. Forced into an uneasy alliance, Beck and Travis join forces with rebel leader Mariana (Rosario Dawson) to fight back against Hatcher’s men and uncover the truth behind the fabled treasure.
The Rundown states its intentions right upfront in the film’s pre-title sequence. Beck is sent to retrieve a gambling debt from a pro football quarterback, as he makes his way through the club he bumps into Arnold Schwarzenegger who quips “Have fun.”
This film was designed to make The Rock the next great action hero, complete with the last generation passing the torch. The scene that follows, where Beck has to work his way through the QB’s entire offensive line partying at the same club, complete with Fox NFL Sunday style chyrons introducing them, is one of the best in the film.
There’s a tension in The Rundown between the script, which was clearly intended to be a harder-edge thriller, and the cast who are all in this for light PG-13 level action-comedy.
The good news is that between Johnson, Scott, Dawson, and Walken everyone here understands how to do comedy so the film is never boring or embarrassing. The bad news is that unlike Midnight Run, which was clearly the inspiration to this film, there’s never enough grit or danger to really take things seriously. The Rundown was written to be something in the vein of 48 Hours or Beverly Hills Cop where the humor was situational and came naturally from funny people in otherwise desperate situations, but action movies in 2003 needed self-referential eyebrow raising at the audience, so they knew that the filmmakers were in on the joke almost like a later Roger Moore Bond film.
The Rundown is therefore good, but not great.
It’s a movie that was made along the path of least resistance, where the tough hero has to choose between desperate rebels or his job and everyone who’s ever seen a movie before knows what he’s going to do. Because it’s very well cast, and it’s directed very safely by Berg it is perfectly watchable and even charming at points. Because it’s just a movie and not a multi-medium media franchise, it’s even a little nostalgic for me.
This is The Rock that everyone loved but it cannot decide if it wants to be a harder edge action film that sets him up as the new Arnold or a PG-13 Rush Hour style romp. Movies that try to serve everyone tend to end up a little bland, and I can’t help but feel, looking back, that this was a missed opportunity.
Filling out the release are three commentary tracks, featurettes, deleted scenes, and a trailer.
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