By Joshua Knopp/reporter
Dwayne Johnson has proved an incredibly talented actor since his shift from wrestling, but the man can’t pick a script for the life of him.
Faster, Johnson’s newest film, casts him as Driver, a bank robber who was murdered along with the rest of his crew by a rival gang. Driver sprang miraculously back to life, only to serve a 10-year prison sentence. Upon his release, he begins to hunt down and kill the four marauders who hit him and his crew, which included his older brother.
But this is just one of the storylines. Billy Bob Thornton plays Cop, the policeman who pursues Driver after he begins to kill. Cop is mere days away from retirement but is more invested in the case than he lets on.
Yet another storyline follows Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Killer, a hit-man hired by the mysterious mastermind behind the gang that hit Driver’s crew to kill Driver before he finishes off everyone on his list.
The multiple-storylines-meeting-at-the-end structure that Faster employs doesn’t work as well as moviemakers seem to think it does, particularly when the advertisements feature only one or two of them. Audiences are left rooting for Johnson and wondering when he’s going to come back when forced to follow Thornton or Jackson-Cohen. The disparity in the actors’ respective popularities doomed this approach from the start, and while it would have worked if they’d shared as many scenes as they had apart from each other, this just doesn’t.
The attention to detail is a little off as well. Johnson first fires eight then 10 shots out of his six-shooter before reloading dramatically. Jackson-Cohen sees his therapist twice, proposes and gets married and sells his house and buys a new one all within the five-day timeline. His girlfriend-turned-wife (Maggie Grace), who that afternoon had been shooting cans and bottles with him in her wedding dress that she had bought and been fitted for the night before, is in tears and threatens to leave him over him finishing his current job.
Faster has some refreshing elements, however. Johnson has made one of the smoothest professional transitions in recent history. Muscle cars, desert sunsets and massive revolvers frequent the screen, adding a retro-Western tinge to the film. Johnson’s victim’s progression from scum to minister reflects his own path to redemption.
Faster is good for its target audience though it’ll be nice to see a crime movie that doesn’t also follow the cop.
Final take: Sometimes-stupid, sometimes-excellent action movie
Those who would enjoy it: Dwayne Johnson fans, Western lovers
