Rampage - a review

Primatologist Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson – No I’m not making this up) goes after his albino gorilla George as the primate got an unhealthy dose of some toxic gooey. George is now growing and mutating and, what’s more, becoming uncontrollably aggressive. Together with scientist Kate Caldwell (Naomi Harris) and ‘the man from another agency’ Harvey Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) they try to find a cure. They’d better hurry up because George isn’t the only one who got in contact with the toxic.

Videogame movies are difficult to make. A lot of old games have too little story to make a movie out of it. A lot of later games have a lot of story but, alas, all of the dime novels calibre.
Hollywood still hasn’t figured out the exact formula. They come close at times but then after every Silent Hill comes a Silent Hill: revelation. Or, more recently after Rampage comes the Tomb Raider reboot.

Tomb Raider would have been a far better movie without the shoehorned father plotline.

Rampage is in fact a -dare I say it- 'good' videogame movie for two very simple reasons: the original game’s whole premise was: ‘monsters smashing buildings’. So the minute you’ve written that bit into the movie you’re basically done. Two, it casts Dwayne Johnson as a primatologist. If you can accept that then the rest of the movie won’t let you down.

No, of course, realism isn’t what this movie is striving at. It’s got a gigantic white ape who speaks highly advanced sign language (because; of course he does) and a wolf named Ralph.
So when you go on this rollercoaster you just have to grab your popcorn and enjoy it.

There is a small environmental lesson in this movie about poachers but that’s just the Jurassic Park-blueprint talking.

The eighties called
I had to check it, but yes Rampage is branded 12A -and I AM taking the kids to see it. Finally here we have a kid-friendly movie that allows itself some curse words, blood and gore, and some visual tomfoolery. I was, at times, shocked that Rampage got away with some of the things it showed. Suddenly I felt a call-back to Temple of Doom which, I think, was one of the last times that a movie pushed the ratings envelope.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that this movie is over the top in its depiction of violence (but with a movie called Rampage it is to be expected) but you do see a quick shot of a torn apart body or two.
So with the surgent of torture-porn horror movies well behind us now, in 2018, movies have finally decided to show what is needed to show without focussing on it. Just like it was in the 1980s.

Fun action
Like Tom Cruise’s The mummy Rampage also has an plane crash moment inside the plane. But unlike The mummy, here it actually works. It’s a fun action scene in which hero and heroine save the day together. And that is basically the whole of the last hour of Rampage – fun action scene after fun action scene.

The minute the monsters enter Chicago (because villain stupidity knows no bounds) the camera happily zooms over the streets as the monsters destroy building after building. Just as the videogame demanded. But this time with slightly more advanced computer graphics.

Fun actors
Like Johnson’s San Andreas in which he singlehandedly punched a tectonic plate to a standstill Rampage too is reliant on his natural charisma and physique as the man the audience wants to follow to save the day. Harris then fills in the obligatory story strands about science gone wrong. But luckily the script allows her character some moments to shine as an individual.

Morgan, then, is the difficult character to like. He plays the lone sheriff government agent with a thick accent and a macho swagger. You are bound to remember the character, that’s for sure. But, overall, he’s just there to (sometimes literally) clean up some discarded story strands.

The real showstealers, however, to me were the brother and sister villains (Jake Lacy and Malin Akkerman). Dumb villains are always fun to see. And by the time the duo is formally introduced we’ve already had to accept The Rock as a primatologist so we’re ready for anything.

Normally these kinds of movies offer only one villain (or somebody suddenly bombarded to be a villain as was the case in San Andreas) so it’s always fun to see two. More fun even if it is the woman in charge over her sniffling little brother. Giving her best megalomaniac performance with a side-order of two-faced-ness Akerman is having a blast. Even though, I must admit, her master-plan would make the worst Bond-villain scratch his head.

Ramp it up
Rampage is good old fashioned summer blockbuster material that, for once, isn’t a sequel or a prequel. True it is an adaptation of a videogame but then an original game so lacking in story that anything goes. The movie delivers just that: anything –including the kitchen sink and grandma’s slippers. It is a fun action ride that isn’t scared to throw some healthy profanity to the kiddies to blush about.
So what’s next for The Rock now that he fought a giant Gorilla? When is he going to space? Oh, right: Doom. Not all videogame movies work I guess (but I liked it).