THE RUNDOWN

By: Abbie Bernstein
Review Date: Friday, September 26, 2003

Although it has a title that reveals nothing and a tease that sounds unpromisingly generic, THE RUNDOWN turns out to be a surprisingly entertaining action/adventure movie with likable characters, high-energy performances, kick-ass action and an actual sense of adventure.

The Rock stars as Beck, a "retrieval expert" who demonstrates said expertise in an opening sequence that has him non-lethally but impressively going up against an entire football team in order to obtain a ring off one of the players as collateral for the footballer's unpaid debts. Without question, Beck is good at his job. However, the big guy wants out of the punching people game and simply wants to open a restaurant. His shifty primary employer Walker (Jon Gries) vows to give Beck his freedom and enough money for the restaurant if Beck will do one last retrieval job find and bring back Walker's son Travis (Seann William Scott), who has vanished into the Amazon region of Brazil.

It turns out that Travis is treasure hunting, seeking a fabled statue that is said to be on the territory of mine owner Hatcher (Christopher Walken).  Feisty bar owner Mariana (Rosario Dawson) will help Travis out for a share of the profits but Beck simply wants to get his man and go home.

The fact

that Beck prefers not to use guns both gives him credibility as a good guy and provides an excuse for any number of deftly-staged martial arts sequences, pitting the big guy against multiple opponents. Director Peter Berg creates just the right suspension of disbelief, so that we don't spend too much time wondering how Beck can come up swinging after bouncing down a mountain (as he does at one point) or what the heck a troop of baboons are doing in a Brazilian jungle. The pace clicks along briskly, the characters all have solid motives and Christopher Walken's juicy yet appropriately-sized villainy is a continual source of bad guy delight.

The Rock is affable and credible; he doesn't try too hard and the script by R.J. Stewart and James Vanderbilt from Stewart's story doesn't push too hard, so that we accept Beck as a guy with a rough past without feeling like we're being asked to weep for him. Scott seems to be cornering the market on the almost suicidally bold buffoon with a heart of gold roles, for the reason that he's very good at playing this type of character, and Dawson is forthright and charismatic. Ewen Bremner is enjoyable as Beck's pilot, who possesses an uncompromisingly incomprehensible Scots accent.

Fists, feet, guns, explosions, snappy dialogue, a rollicking pace and even some treasure THE RUNDOWN has everything one could ask for in this type of genre, including just enough self-awareness to avoid self-importance. It's pure action fun.

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