Review: Rampage Is Big, Dumb, And Full Of Fun
- Apr 12, 2018
- 2 min read
When I heard that Rampage, an arcade beat 'em up about giant monsters destroying a city, was getting the movie treatment I was thoroughly confused. How can a game with so little substance work as a film? It is however that lack of substance that makes Rampage stand out.
When three mysterious boxes falls from space, each of them carrying a gas that rewrites genetic data, three animals come into contact with them. An alligator, a wolf and a gorilla named George, friend to one Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson). It is this relationship between man and ape that forms the core of Rampage. As George deals with the confusion and rage brought about by his rapidly mutating self, Davis tries to prevent a mysterious government agency, led by Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Agent Russwell, and the military from wiping out the animals. Thus, for the most part, we have our movie.
Rampage is a simple movie, and it's a good one as well. Possibly the best video game movie since ever, and also maybe Johnson's best film to date, it's unabashedly fun, excessive in a good and utterly glorious is it's magnificent monster destruction. Truly there are only three real problems with Rampage. One, some of the effects are less than great, with the monsters often not seeming to be in the scene. Two, the mustache twirling "villains", heads of the Baddy McEvil corporation (seriously, they're absurdly generic, and not great) who get some enjoyable comeuppance. Three, a copout, though not awful ending.
But between The Rock's enormous Schwarzenegger-esque charisma, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's consumption of all the scenery and the suitably fun monster battle that caps it all off, Rampage is a lot of fun. It's a very stupid movie, everything is handed to the characters on a silver platter, and there's a bit too much focus on those "characters", but in that Pacific Rim, Power Rangers, Skull Island way, it's easy to tune out all the stuff you usually care about in movies, and watch The Rock duke it out with some big old monsters. And there's nothing wrong with that.
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