By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Brad Peyton
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomi Harris, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jake Lacy, Marley Shelton, P.J. Byrne, Demetrius Grosse, Jack Quaid, Breanne Hill, Matt Gerald, Will Yun Lee and Joe Manganiello.
Rating: Average.
Brad Peyton, director of “San Andreas” works with Dwayne Johnson for the third time in “Rampage”, an action/science fiction film that brings entertaining results.
Based on the arcade game from the 80´s, the movie centers in Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson) a Primatologist who works in a wildlife preservation in San Diego. He has a special relationship with George, an albino gorilla who he rescued from poachers way back.
One day Davis begins to notice that George is growing more on size and his behavior begins to change. Davis tries to find the solution and he will meet Dr. Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris) a genetic engineer who tells Davis that George has been infected by a Pathogen from a company named Energyne, who she used to work with.
The problem gets worse when George escapes the preservation and he will be on the loose. For making things even worse a crocodile and a wolf have been infected by the pathogen as well.
Now both Davis and Kate will try to find the solution to stop the animals of causing more damage before it´s too late.
“Rampage” is a film that I mentioned before that entertains since it is very well made visually. On the other hand in terms of story not so much.
Normally in films that are based on videogames there is tendency to see sloppy stories and here is no different. I believe that this is in part because stories for videogames are designed for that specific medium and not necessarily does work on film. At the end of the day the goal is to make money and movies like “Rampage” are those kind of films.
Going back to the screenplay which was written by Ryan Engle, Carlton Cuse, Ryan J. Condal and Adam Sztykiel had an interesting theme but the execution not so much. I have mentioned in this space that having more than three writers in a project can be dangerous in a way that the project may fail. Here it did in terms of story and the dialogue of the film by moments is laughable and some scenes I understand why were in the film but I feel that they could have been cut down.
Seeing Dwayne Johnson is very fun in this film, he makes this film and even though I´m not a personal fan of his acting skills, I do admit that he is an actor with a lot of charm and he brings it in this film. The chemistry between him and Naomie Harris does work in this movie and has moments that are very fun and entertaining.
Brad Peyton did shot an impressive film and I do acknowledge that . I think that he can be even a better director if he chooses better screenplays and also if he can focus more in directing actors as well.
Another problem that I had in the film were they villains both portrayed by Jake Lacy and Malin Akerman. I guess that Akerman was a little bit more cruel but still I was not that convinced and in Lacy´s part I felt that he was laughable the whole time. Maybe that was the goal on making them that way but in this kind of films I think you´re villains have to be as good as your heroes in order to make a project like this work.
I understand that making films of this genre takes a lot of work but you can be better if you can focus on your story and your characters.
Still I did enjoyed “Rampage” and I had a good time but I feel that it could have been a better film for the elements that I mentioned and that´s why I give it a marginal recommendation.