Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I dunno, man. I think Dwayne Johnson’s got real potential. I just saw THE RUNDOWN on DVD last week, and there’s some really nice action scenes in there, and he’s far more personable than the annoying Sean William Scott. I think remaking WALKING TALL is a goofy idea, though. The positive reviews we’ve been getting have all been wafer-thin and barely articulated, like this one:
Hey Harry,
Wanted to share my insights with you, went to a snneek preview of walking tall over the weekeknd, and all I can say is, if you want a 90 minute distraction from the world,and carry a big stick..well walking tall is your movie, people who are thinking its like the original 3 walking talls are going to be dissapointed...for one..its set in west virgina not georgia. 2 the rock dwayne johnson is no joe don baker or dan severenson...so it was basically what the trailer shows...man come homes from the milatary, his best friend now the evil corrupt big wig of the towns main money maker, a casino...rock goes to the casino...and starts to find all of the corrupt things that are being done in the valley,becomes sherrif, fires all the deputees, and avenges and layeth's the smackdown on all they're candy ass'es..(hey had to put a rock phrase in here)...
So along with that we have the eye candy for the movie,I mean what action movie doesnt have it....in this case it was ashley scott...who reminded me why my eyes have missed watching the now canceled "birds of prey"..
so she plays the love interest,or better said sexual partner to the ,main character. So bottom line its a very basic action movie...that was ok if your looking to get away from life...but isnt that what movies do anyway..walking tall did it for me...
I hope you post my review Harry,and forgive the typoes..
Call me Zathras.....:)
Well, anyone who knows Zathras knows he is a strange creature who may not be particularly bright. We’ll forgive him the typos and his enthusiasm. But you see what I mean? It’s like praising the film is just too much work to be bothered. If this is as positive as the reviews get, there’s a problem, like with this guy:
Let me call myself "notsosilentbob". I saw a screening last night of Walking Tall the new film starring The Rock. I came in with low expectations and wasnt expecting much since some of his movies are dreadful( The Scorpion King) and some aren't half bad(The Rundown).
The Rock(lesser known as Dwayne johnson) has grown much as an actor and can act his way out of a plastic bag. The film flows well and he does a great job kicking some ass. The supporting cast is really good though like Johnny Knoxville, who stole the show with his one liners.
One major problem is the running time...1 hour and 20 minutes!!! The beginning's expositions is like 20 minutes and the climax/end is 10 minutes. Sure the action scenes are cool but, i wanted more.
Overall the film was about a 2 1/2 star film out of 4. You should see it with a nice bucket of popcorn(DEFINITELY A POPCORN FILM!)
Is that supposed to get me worked up? If these are plants, they’re the most half-hearted plants I’ve ever seen. When I saw that The Foywonder, our resident bad movie maven, had sent in a review, I took that as a good sign. I figured he must have relished the pain. No such luck, though. Instead, I think we’ve finally found the movie that broke The Foywonder’s will to mock. Check this out:
***MINOR SPOILERS***
Saw a sneak preview of WALKING TALL tonight. Personally, I felt like walking out. I’m sure there are going to be some that will tell you that this movie is a fun time waster. A total waste of time would be more accurate. WALKING TALL is one of the sorriest excuses for an action movie I’ve seen in quite some time. THE RUNDOWN proved to me that The Rock does have what it takes to be the next big action star but that isn’t going to happen unless he has a long talk with his agent about signing him up to star in crap like this. I’m amazed the studio did a sneak preview screening for this flick because I’ve seen movies before that weren’t even screened in advance for professional critics that were better than this.
Much has been said about this “remake” of the 70’s Joe Don Baker classic ever since it was announced that The Rock would be starring in it. The original was the true story of Buford Pusser, a man returning to his backwoods town to find it overrun with drugs and corruption, which he then precedes to clean up the hard way. The reason that movie was a big hit then and still has a strong following today, despite being very much a product of it’s time, is because it was a gritty, hard hitting, pull no punches melodrama of redneck justice. You don’t get too many of those nowadays. This new film claims to have been “inspired by a true story” but set in present day around a character not named Buford Pusser. I’d be a lot more willing to accept that if this movie wasn’t such a poorly written bore. I thought remaking DAWN OF THE DEAD was a terrible idea but was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed the remake so I decided to give this new WALKING TALL a shot. I should have known I wouldn’t be so lucky twice in one week.
The main problem is that this WALKING TALL feels like someone wrote a modern day reworking of the original film and then the producers sent the script off to some Hollywood script doctor to punch it up and make it more “marketable”, and by “marketable” I mean they dumbed it down and added a lot of inane attempts at humor. The whole brief sequence of The Rock dealing with the town’s drug problem is just a brief montage that’s clearly played for laughs. All these serious scenes and speeches about cleaning up the town and when he finally gets around to it the whole thing is treated as a joke? Even worse, it’s not funny. In fact, very little of the movie’s humor is actually humorous. It’s just dumb and annoying and dull.
Frankly, the action scenes are nothing special either. There aren’t that many in the movie to begin with and what few there are last very briefly. Most consist of hand-to-hand combat but it is shot so up-close that it’s hard to follow. I’ve seen this done in quite a few movies recently and I don’t know why. Hey directors, don’t be afraid to pull back and actually give us a wide shot every now and then so we can get a good look at what’s going on!
While the original WALKING TALL looks today very much like a movie from the early 70’s, this WALKING TALL looks like a cheap direct-to-video movie you’d find on the new release shelf in Blockbuster right now. I’d compare it to a movie released back in the 80’s by Golan-Globus but some of their movies were actually entertaining. Not this. Even for a mindless action movie this is just crap. If this movie had been made back in the 80’s I doubt many people would be clamoring for a special edition DVD today.
The movie opens to the tune of “Midnight Rider” and I halfway expected “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes to come riding up on a motorcycle wearing a wrestling mask but instead we get introduced to The Rock’s character, Chris Vaughn, an ex-soldier returning to his hometown after being away for a long time. The town isn’t the same one he grew up in. The local mill has been shut down. The drug problem is soaring. The local crooked casino owner/drug dealer controls the town and has the police in his back pocket. Vaughn reunites with his family and his old friend Ray, a grunge rocker burnout turned ex-con recovering drug addict played by Johnny Knoxville. They go play football with some old friends including Hamilton something or other, an old pal who is now the crooked casino owner/drug dealer. After witnessing some drug dealing and exposing a fixed craps game, Vaughn gets into a brawl inside the casino. A little later, Hamilton’s thugs end up brutalizing him and leaving him for dead. Soon after recovering, his nephew nearly dies of an overdose of crystal meth purchased from some of Hamilton’s goons. Immediately, The Rock makes like Hacksaw Jim Duggan and dons his trusty 2x4 to kick some ass and clean up the town.
The brawl that ensues is the best sequence in the whole movie but it’s followed up with a ridiculous courtroom sequence that culminates with The Rock giving this ridiculously vacuous speech to the jury leading to his acquittal for assault and battery charges. It’s the kind of scene and the kind of speech that gets made fun of in other movies and TV shows. Next thing you know he’s the new town sheriff and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…………………….
By this point I just didn’t give a damn anymore. Like I said, the movie is just a poorly written mess that can’t decide whether it wants to be a gritty drama or an action comedy and so it ends up failing miserably at both. The Rock really seems shoehorned into the part of this deadpan vigilante lunkhead that just doesn’t fit him and stifles a lot of the natural charisma he showed in THE RUNDOWN. Plus, he’s saddled with Johnny Knoxville as your generic annoying comedic sidekick. Apparently we’re supposed to be amused by Knoxville’s hyena-like cackling and David Arquette-style camera mugging. I was not. If you actually find his antics amusing in this movie then you may actually enjoy the film. If not, he’s just the nail in the coffin.
It’s said that a hero is only as good as the villain that opposes him. If that’s the case then this is the most damning evidence of what a crappy movie this is. I wrote a review a while back where I came up with the concept of naming an ultra generic villain “Guy Evil”. A “Guy Evil” villain is a movie villain so poorly defined that his only defining traits are that he’s a guy and he’s evil. That’s the best way to describe this Hamilton guy here that is the evil rich guy that owns the casino and controls the local drug trade. He’s a guy and he’s evil and that’s it. They should have just named him Guy Evil. And he’s hardly the only character in this movie that one-dimensional.
Chris Vaughn’s family consists of a couple of non-characters. His dad’s only defining trait is that he’s a constantly professing pacifist who hates guns so you just know he’s going to shoot one of the bad guys before it’s all over. His mom and his sister are just there. It looks at first as if there’s going to be more interaction between Vaughn and his young nephew but it too goes nowhere as it becomes clear that he only exists to introduce the movie’s drug element.
Ashley Scott plays an old girlfriend of Vaughn’s that soon becomes his love interest again. And I do mean soon. They have all of about 3 minutes of screen time before he’s pinning her to the mat again. I think the only reason they even included her character was to toss in a little T&A, albeit T&A of a PG-13 level, as she’s in a bra during 85% of her scenes. The first time we see her she’s working as a stripper in the casino, they have another brief meeting, and the next time they have a scene together they waste no time getting all hot and heavy. Afterwards the bad guys show up and a shootout begins and as soon as this scene is over, no more Ashley Scott. She’s gone and not mentioned again. She’s just another totally pointless character.
By the way, I live in an area with plenty of casinos. How come none of them have wet t-shirt go-go dancers on the casino floor or backroom peep shows? But I digress.
And where the hell is the rest of the movie? I think ARMY OF DARKNESS was longer than this flick. There seems to be whole lot missing and the short run time all but confirms this. Was this thing even 80 minutes long? A perfect example comes at the end of the trial where Vaughn vows to run for Sheriff and then in the very next scene he’s the sheriff. You’d think we’d miss a lot in between seeing. There’s other moments like that where you get the feeling there’s a whole scene missing. Doesn’t say much for MGM’s faith in the movie if they decided to edit it down to the bare bones like this. The movie is just a train wreck, although not one you’ll want to slow down and have a look at. When the graphic dedicating the movie to the late Buford Pusser appeared on the screen at the very end I listened real hard for a whirling sound coming from underground.
Heck, if you changed the setting from Washington State to the Ozarks, replaced The Rock with Steven Seagal, and changed the title from WALKING TALL to FIRE DOWN BELOW 2, I seriously doubt anyone would notice the difference. At least with Seagal it would have kitsch value. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go pop a copy Brian Bosworth’s STONE COLD into the old VCR and try to cleanse my pallet.
- The Foywonder (www.schlocktoberfest.com)
Oof. Big freakin’ oof.
"Moriarty" out.
