SummaryPrimatologist Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson), a man who keeps people at a distance, shares an unshakable bond with George, the extraordinarily intelligent, silverback gorilla who has been in his care since birth. But a rogue genetic experiment gone awry mutates this gentle ape into a raging creature of enormous size. To make matters wors...
SummaryPrimatologist Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson), a man who keeps people at a distance, shares an unshakable bond with George, the extraordinarily intelligent, silverback gorilla who has been in his care since birth. But a rogue genetic experiment gone awry mutates this gentle ape into a raging creature of enormous size. To make matters wors...
Keeps playing its two winning cards over and over again, and is smart enough to realise they are more than enough. The first is the giant animal carnage itself, which crackles with fun ideas and flourishes throughout. The second is the comic chemistry of a superbly picked cast who bring everyone in on the joke.
The engaging dynamic between our hero and his gargantuan, computer-generated pal is the movie’s best surprise, with silly and straight bits both working mostly as intended for director Brad Peyton (Johnson’s “Journey 2” and “San Andreas”).
Rampage won’t set the world on fire (our world, at least; it sets plenty of its world on fire when George and his two giant pals arrive in Chicago), but it does exactly what it says on the tin: It’s a big, goofy romp about creatures who lay waste to a major American city while the Rock cracks jokes in a light brown shirt.
The gargantuan critters are dwarfed only by the derivativeness in Rampage, a clunky spectacle that, like many Dwayne Johnson vehicles, is elevated by his charismatic presence but not enough to recommend it.
The movie is at its best when it’s sopping with sentimentality and when it goes right over the top in its depiction of dorky destruction. Everything in between is a drag.
At times, Rampage almost hides its problems. It’s just funny enough, just exciting enough and just visually impressive enough. What it never is, though, is anything more than just enough.
You know what might make an intriguing, revealing movie? The story of how, over 30 years after its debut, a relatively innocent arcade game starring a giant ape and other oversize beasts underwent a corporate transmogrification and became a turgid, logy sci-fi/action blockbuster.
Whenever a movie has even the smallest flaw, it becomes easier to criticize because you can easily come with why you did not like it. A flawless picture, on the other hand, it's a bit tricky. All you do is praise its qualities saying something along the lines of "a deep, emotional masterpiece" but that does not sound very argumentative. But it is how it is, so please indulge me while I try to pick myself up from the misery of this movie's greatness.
Brad Peyton and his peers, especially screenwriter Ryan Engle took a progressive tone, slowly unraveling the love between the 46-year-old huge musclehead Dwayne and 24-feet-tall albino gorilla called George. Yet despite this progression being noticeable pretty quickly, it never fails to touch you (no pun intended) on an testosteron level, with every explosion being delivered like Michael Bay delivers his farts.
Indeed, EXPLOSIONS and HUGE MONSTERS is what drives this movie, and Peyton's favourite weapons to unleash it are the EXPLOSIONS and most of all, the HUGE FKIN GORILLA. The fact that this takes place in San Diego/Chicago during summer allows for the landscape to become fkin hot. Indeed, every EXPLOSION, MONSTER or simple MUSCLE FLEXIN is augmented by occasionally filming characters from afar, letting the nature take the spotlight. And it is worthy of the spotlight, as "nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spots".
But even smaller elements of nature are presented often through symbolism, like the scene in which Dwayne fights a huge fkin mutated alligator. Its a sexual scene, but is also more complex than it look at first glance, as the alligator represents Lacoste, swag and Dwayne represents every person who wants to be cool.
But, this is till a coming-of-age story and Dwayne's frustration with sexuality unfolds through a beautiful yet heartbreaking search of a fkin HUGE gorilla. This, indeed, is not a film which glorifies and attempts to make us accept fkin HUGE MONSTERS, but a heartwarming, subtle, touching (see, I told you I would fall into the misery) and deep story about how to destroy a fkin city with the aid of a HUGE fkin gorilla , a flying wolf and the biggest fkin alligator i've ever seen . Arguably the best of the year.
5.5 for me - while the action was everything you expect from The Rock movie (good), there were so many cringy moments and a bit stupid dialogue at some times. Plus the bad guys didn't make sense fully and meant that the plot had some parts which werent thought out. Also the way George got his antidote was too silly and in no way they could have predicted what he will do at that point
This is a entertaining monster movie with the Rock. It's not the worst movie ever made but it's better than the last couple Godzilla movies. The dialogue was bad at times. Some good actors in this but not sure they would be proud of this one. They didn't have much to work with. The Rock is not a good actor. But he always brings that presence and charisma that he has. The action scenes were entertaining but you really have to overlook how dumb the plot is.. Like in a lot of movies like this it's not winning any awards for the story. But it's worth a watch just for the action scenes.
There isn’t a whole lot to say about this one. It’s slow, boring, and stupid. About as average as action films get. However, at least it was short. It’s only about 100 minutes long, not that bad as far as these kinds of movies go. I guess 2018 was the year where video game movies stopped being awful and started getting mediocre. They’ll start getting good any year now! I just know it!
Rampage is boring, I wanted this film to be good but there's so much wrong with this film, it's a cash grab mainly made for stupid people like me to go watch this movie in theaters because it's clear that people behind this film want people who like big dumb action films to watch this film. Seriously the final action scene is 40 minutes, if you don't think that is very long here's something that might change your mind, the film is an hour and 40 minutes, the action scenes aren't even good. The characters in the beginning don't even comeback, we never see them after Dwayne leaves. Also I don't want this review to be too long so I'm just gonna leave some points. Bad story. Bad pacing. Bad dialogue. Mediocre animation
Production Company
New Line Cinema,
ASAP Entertainment,
Wrigley Pictures,
Flynn Picture Company,
7 Bucks Entertainment,
Seven Bucks Productions,
Twisted Media