Review of Central Intelligence (2016) by Steven J — 19 Jul 2016

While Kevin Hart stayed believable in one character throughout, The Rock played at least 3 different characters moving between them in a way that drew attention to the weirdness of it. I don't know if it was his decision, but more likely it was the director's.

The first character played by The Rock is Bob, a very likable, almost naive gentle giant who seemingly idolizes Kevin Hart's character Calvin.

A very different character Bob plays is a hardened, confident, lethal CIA field operative who seems to be chumming up to Calvin only to use him for his forensic accounting and computer skills (did these guys steal the plot from Adam Sandler's Netflix movie "The Do-Over"? or vice versa?). We see this CIA Bob effortlessly defeat a gang of five armed bar thugs in a scene straight from a comic book in its choreographed absurdity.

A third character played by The Rock is adult Bob in his super heroes body who still sees himself as the awkward, defeated, humiliated fat kid who is easily defeated by the mocking insults of a weakling nemesis from his bad old high school days (Jason Bateman).

Super easy going, innocent, puppy dog best friend. Lethal, trained killer. Shamed, weak, humiliated loser.

Perhaps another actor could have pulled off the awkward unbelievability of these three schizophrenic characters Dwayne Johnson is asked to play.

Each personality might be believable on its own, but mixed up randomly throughout the movie it just doesn't work.

Wait for cable or Netflix.