Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson might have the lock on playing the classic "Pulp" hero.
The cinematic Rampage starts playing with both trope & genre, as astronaut/scientist Dr. Atkins (Marley Sheton) making a harrowing "Final/Survivor Girl" escape from a doomed space station in orbit over planet Earth. The research station bears a resemblance to that stereotypical, generic International Space Station look to the research stations depicted in the schlock Alien ripoff Life & the more ponderous drama Gravity. (Now that I think about it, didn't each of those have a similar ending?) Rampage establishes tropes, world & background quickly through a few efficient interactions, keeping the focus tight on the final moments of a survival/scifi horror story.
Corporate big bad Energyne is using the Artemis space station to conduct illegal genetic modification research that, of course, goes awry. Their Weyland-Yutani credentials established, it's time for a giant lab rat to chase Sheton trough exploding corridors in zero-G. It's like the creative team here decided to give you a TL;DR version of the aforementioned Life, plus a few more flicks tossed in, just to save you $20 and 90 minutes of your life lost to a far inferior film.
The escape doesn't go as planned, and 3 cannisters of genetic modification science experiment... stuff get launched out across North America.
Cut to Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson), an impoverished, down on his luck petty thief on the run from the cops in a harsh, edgy city.
Wait, that doesn't happen?
The Rock doesn't start off this movie in a prison cell, being told his only way out is to join... Giant Monkey Force?
Really?
Because I swear to Christ that's how the last three or four movies I watched started their protagonist off. Including a BIBLICAL F___ING "EPIC". (There are more starting points in a story for protagonist than "Alladin the lvl 1 Thief". Your female soldier doesn't have to be forced into working with dogs because she embarasses herself in front of an MP on a drunken girls' night out. Honest!*)
Davis is leading a pair of interns through the artificial jungle of a San Diego wildlife habitat. There's no getting around Dwayne's impressive biceps, after all, it is a big arm, but here we also have him established as a high IQ hero as he converses in sign language with albino rescue gorilla named George.
It's here that I'll point out that we have little to fear in a Dwayne Johnson-led Doc Savage film. After watching him in Jumanji and this, he's almost The Man of Bronze already.
George for his part is as well an animated gorilla as Weta's previous effort in Peter Jackson's King Kong. And it's nice to see at least one non-ILM sfx group that has their act together. Not just the setpiece shots, but less action oriented scenes, particularly one of an infant George, looked fantastic.
As a female intern flirts in rather heavy-handed fashion with Davis, I was about to sigh, roll my eyes, and write off The Rock's character as yet another sexless nu-Hollywood protagonist. But not only did they give hints of a reason for this early on, establishing that he almost obsessively spends more time in his animal preservation work than engaging with coworkers, or other people in general.
Davis is that experienced, bitter & antisocial hero. The veteran hero. He's revealed to not only have attained power, (or Agency, of a sort) but become a recluse because of his experiences. His character arc involves him becoming able to trust and empathize with his fellow humans again, people who will need him & George to save them by the 3rd act.
To, like with the symbolism of a silverback gorilla, embrace the tribe, to protect it with violence, so it can live in peace & welcome new members.
As the plot goes, it's a rapid action flick as George is introduced to the mutagen, sexy scientist Dr. Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris) shows up. (And boom! There goes that dry, sexless hero! I told you The Rock is the kind of guy who refuses to let his normie audience down! By the end, a budding relationship is at least implied, if not gestured towards.) A secret government agent captures George, a mutated Wolf is introduced, and the evil corporate (IIs there any other kind in the movies? Don't answer that.) business woman Claire Wyden (Malin Ackerman) turns on a literal plot device to bring the animals to Chicago to introduce a 'cure', and we arrive at an impressive titular Rampage.
About the only irritant in the film involve Claire. If Jasyn Jones is going to unjustly whine about Bill Mendelson's "Wimpy" Sorrento in Ready Player One, I have to pause at Hollywood writers seeing fit to hand all the sociopathic tendencies to a female character in this film (including randomly shooting people) while leaving her brother Brett (Jake Lacy) as the ineffectual, tantrum-throwing comic relief villain. This is mollified by the fact that Malin is also vamp sexy in a red dress, (even if she is likely to become the unfortunate fixation of vorfe fetishists), and maybe that it's an impressive step for a woman to be an evil, corrupt, powerful & irredeemable villain in fiction. (I mean, we already had the reality in the 2016 election, so, why not tart it up a little for a movie?)
But the pace is brisk, the sense of Adventure is there (and yes, I need to write that Jumanji review to explain to y'all the exact difference between the Action & Adventure aspects of the Action-Adventure film genre), The Rock remains the most satisfying entertainer of a generation. Go see a big monkey in theaters. In 3D.
(*Look, I just saved you at least $75 worth of a $3000 Writer's Workshop, the least you can do is gibs shekels. or at the very least, visit my DeviantArt & YouTube)
