Rampage (2018) Review

Another video game movie!  Will Rampage be the first good video game movie?  Probably not...



A space station/laboratory owned by the unscrupulous Claire Wyden (Malin Akerman), crashes after a genetic experiment goes horrible wrong.  Three containers that carry a substance that causes mutations in animals crash to earth.  A wolf and an alligator are both infected, as is a gorilla named George that is in captivity.  As George starts to grow and become more violent, his friend and rescuer Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson) tries to figure out how to save George and how to stop the rampaging animals from destroying Chicago.


What Works:

Rampage is another extremely stupid movie.  But the one thing that keeps the movie somewhat grounded is Dwayne Johnson and his relationship with George.  Johnson is just so damn charismatic that he can say practically any line and make it work.  He's extremely likable, especially because he doesn't like people.  He'd rather spend his time with animals.  Can you say "relatable"?  The movie does a decent job of establishing the bond between him and George and you can tell they really care about each other and will fight for the other.  They are the only characters we really care about in the entire movie and it holds the film together.

The other highlight of Rampage is the actual rampage.  When the animals finally get to Chicago, it's pretty awesome.  Seeing them destroy the city and fight each other is really cool.  The fights are badass and the movie delivers on it's promise.  It's a lot of fun and more violent than I expected.


What Sucks:

The writing in Rampage is terrible.  I don't know how these actors managed to say these lines with a straight face.  The characters have these one-liners and jokes that don't work.  Jeffery Dean Morgan's character is hamming it up so much with his delivery, he feels like he is in a completely different movie.  As for our villain, Malin Akerman is terrible in this.  She is completely unconvincing in her delivery of the scientific lines, and I just don't buy that she runs the company.  Totally miscast.

The CGI is pretty rough.  The stuff with the monsters is generally good, but there's quite a few disaster shots that look pretty bad.  Rampage could have used some more TLC before it was released.

Finally, this is more of a personal preference, but I wish the story would have stuck closer to the video games.  In the games, the monsters are people that were accidentally transformed into giant monsters due to experiments gone wrong or some sort of toxic waste.  In the movie they are just animals that accidentally get mutated.  I think the story of people getting transformed into these monsters is much more compelling and it's a shame the filmmakers didn't go that direction.


Verdict:

Rampage is a fun, if very dumb movie.  The action is awesome, and Dwayne Johnson holds the movie together.  But terrible writing and a woefully miscast villain bring the movie down, and I'll always wonder what could have been had the filmmakers stuck to the story from the video games.

 6/10: OK 

Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 4, 2018 at 7:43 PM

    Great cast but its another mindless, heartless giant monster flick destroying the city and trampling everyone. I wonder why the latest Godzilla movie got a bad rap but glorified B-movies like this and Kong Skull Island gets applauded. The monsters are obvious cgi hiding behind dense action sequences, the evil corporate guys are stereotypes from other monster, sci-fi movies we have seen a thousand times before and the military OF COURSE are worthless fodder. > Reviews Rampage 2018 Tiny humvees closing in on very fast gigantic animals firing their machineguns knowing previously how that worked out, Apache helicopters firing at close range at a giant wolf's face with his worthless cannon instead of using guided rockets from a distance, and soldiers go out of their way to be squished like bugs (ala Kong Skull Island style). Its that kind of thing you would see a child playing in his sandbox and destroying his toys. I would have understood if it was a child that made this movie.
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