Previously, on Pro Wrestling Movie Club: “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was a bad dude who killed a bunch of worse dudes (including a reality TV producer) in The Condemned.
This Week: The Rundown (2003)
Tagline: “Cut To The Chase.”
WWE Superstar: The Rock
Also Starring: Seann William Scott, Rosario Dawson, Christopher Walken
Synopsis: A tough aspiring chef is hired to bring home a mobster’s son from the Amazon but becomes involved in the fight against an oppressive town operator and the search for a legendary treasure. (via IMDB)
Watch It: Netflix / Amazon / YouTube
In 2002, after a handful of TV appearances and a supporting role in The Mummy Returns, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson took his first starring role, in the Mummy prequel The Scorpion King, for which he was paid a whopping $5.5 million — then a record for a first-time actor in a starring role. Fourteen years and countless movies later, Johnson became the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, earning an astounding $64.5 million. The Rock is undoubtedly one of the hardest working men in all of show business, and his natural charisma and good looks continue to keep people coming back to the multiplex to see him in action. So why didn’t The Rundown connect?
Released in 2003, shortly after Johnson wrapped up his full-time duties with WWE following back-t0-back feuds with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Goldberg, The Rundown by all accounts should have been a smash hit. Johnson was white-hot in WWE, and he had been well received as a leading man in The Scorpion King. Pairing him alongside the American Pie trilogy’s breakout actor Seann William Scott, Men In Black II leading woman Rosario Dawson and Academy Award winner Christopher Walken seemed like a slam dunk.
The Rundown even earned a 70% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning critics generally liked it. But for some reason, the film didn’t deliver at the box office, falling $5 million short of recouping its $85 million budget. This began Johnson’s hit-or-miss early filmography, with his films just as likely to flop (Doom, Southland Tales) as succeed (Walking Tall, Gridiron Gang). The Rock then somehow tumbled into the kid’s movie realm and put up huge box office numbers in three straight films (The Game Plan, Race To Witch Mountain and Tooth Fairy), rehabbing his Hollywood value, before landing the role of Luke Hobbs in the Fast & The Furious series and going from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, full stop. But it almost didn’t happen because of The Rundown.
Here’s the thing: The Rundown is actually really good. Johnson and Scott have fantastic chemistry, the story makes enough sense to be enjoyable, and the action scenes come off as authentic, and not “here’s a pro wrestler beating a guy up for five minutes.” There’s no obvious reason as to why audiences didn’t connect with it.
The film’s premise is based around a bounty hunter named Beck (Johnson) who wants out of the business and open a restaurant, but in order to do so, he has to complete one last job for his boss: head to a mining town deep in the heart of Brazil to retrieve his boss’ son Travis (Scott), a college dropout who is trying to locate a rare artifact called El Gato De Diablo that is hidden deep within the jungle. Beck locates Travis at a bar run by a mysterious woman named Mariana (Dawson) and tries to take Travis in, resulting in a hilarious inside joke for wrestling fans as Travis tries to headbutt Beck, only to recoil in pain. (Don’t you know never to headbutt a Samoan? C’mon, man.)
Before Beck can extricate his new prisoner, the man in charge of the mining operation, Cornelius Bernard Hatcher (played to perfection by Walken) finds out Travis knows the location of the Gato and tries to kidnap him himself. A huge fight breaks out between Beck and Hatcher’s goons (in which the Rock looks awesome) before Beck and Travis escape. Of course, Travis doesn’t want to leave Brazil, so still handcuffed, he sends Beck’s Jeep careening off a cliff, resulting in a falling-down-a-mountain scene so elongated, it felt like watching Homer Simpson tumble down the Gorge. The scene is so comically long, you can clearly see both leading men’s stunt doubles taking some nasty hits. Hope they got hazard pay that day.
To motivate his goons to find Beck and Travis, Hatcher gives a monologue about the tooth fairy (possibly giving the Rock the idea for the movie in the first place), all the while the odd couple gets tied up in a couple trapping snares and attacked/molested by a roving band of monkeys. The primates are scared off by a band of rebels, led by Mariana, the mysterious bartender from before. Swerve! Travis even says, “The whole time I was working you, you were working me.” Gotta love when pro wrestling jargon makes it into Hollywood films.
Before things get too comfortable, Hatcher and his guys invade the rebel camp and a huge gunfight breaks out. Beck, Travis and Mariana manage to escape on a boat and end up at a waterfall which is the hiding place for the Gato. The trio swims to the hidden cave behind the waterfall to retrieve the statue, but it is predictably booby trapped. The whole place begins to collapse, but the Rock holds everything in place because he is the Rock, allowing Seann William Scott’s character to retrieve the thing right as the whole cave collapses. Amazingly they all survive, but Mariana feeds the two men a rare jungle fruit called konlabos, which paralyzes them and allows her to steal the Gato, as she wants to sell it and use the millions she’d make to fund her rebellion. (For the record, the fruit she actually fed them is called cherimoya, and while the fruit itself is not poisonous, its seeds are, and cherimoya bark extract can cause paralysis if injected. The more you know!)
Once the fruit wears off, Beck and Travis make it to the airport but learn from their pilot Declan (Ewan Brenner) that Mariana got captured by Hatcher, and out of loyalty, the pair decide to go rescue her and get back the Gato. We get a full-on Roddy Piper bagpipes entrance from Declan, kilt and all, before a stampede of cows runs through the town, taking out a bunch of bad guys. (I have literally no idea how this happened — I glanced down at my phone for 30 seconds and the next thing I know, a bunch of dudes are being gored. Go fig.)
Beck and Travis plow through all the remaining low-level bad guys with a minimum of fatalities, but then the gunfire picks up considerably and it’s not looking good for our heroes. So finally, Beck — who had previously said he hates guns — begins straight-up murdering people with a pair of pump-action shotguns. This was actually my least-favorite part of the movie, because why establish a character’s ethics and keep him pure for 90 minutes only to throw it away in the last 10?
Anyway, the Rock gets into a handicap match against three dudes with bullwhips but comes out on top, thanks to some strong booking from creative. Christopher Walken shows up and gets shot multiple times from just about everyone before finally stumbling off and dying. Travis gives the Gato back to Mariana and her people then is brought back to America by Beck. But wait: Beck drugs Travis’ dad and his goons with the same fruit Mariana drugged them with. Double swerve! The pair then flee the scene and head off into parts unknown as the credits roll.
So! We’ve reached the end. In Pro Wrestling Movie Club, we have three specific questions that must be asked at the conclusion of each film:
1. Is The Movie Objectively Any Good? Yes! Finally, a WWE Studios movie that I would actually welcome watching a second time, not for ironic (or drinking-game) purposes.
2. Is The WWE Superstar Any Good In It? The Rock was picture perfect in his role as a reluctant bounty hunter. It’s no surprise he went on to become the biggest movie star in Hollywood; it’s only shocking it took as long as it did.
3. Would I Be Embarrassed To Have A Friend Find A Copy In My Blu-Ray Collection? I used to be extremely anti-Rock to the point where I actually rooted for John Cena during their lengthy feud. But now, my stance on him has softened considerably, and I would happily make some shelf space for this underrated gem.
Next Week: I watch Countdown, starring Dolph Ziggler and — far more importantly — Rusev with a gun.
