Review of Faster (2010) by Shiira — 26 Nov 2010

The Contortionist Formerly Known as The Rock, the former WWF wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne Johnson, hasn't starred in a violent actioneer such as "Faster" since "Walking Tall", the 2004 remake of the 1973 Phil Karson-directed original, choosing instead to appear in star vehicles calculated to soften his image as a bad-ass.

And even then, Johnson stayed away from guns; his character, Chris Vaughn, a former U.S. soldier, carried around a 4 X 4 slab of wood to settle his conflicts. The plan worked; he's not Jean-Claude Van Damme, who(like Johnson) started off in the athletic arena(kickboxing), but soon experienced a wane in popularity, partly because he couldn't act, even though that never stopped an Austrian-born bodybuilder from superstardom and the governorship of California.

Both Johnson and Arnold Schwarzenegger were smart enough to ham it up, deconstructing their machismo by emasculating themselves in kid-friendly projects such as "The Game Plan" and "Kindergarten Cop", while Van Damme and Steven Segall kept making the same mirthless movie over and over again, ad nauseam.

While neither man are particularly gifted as comic actors, in which the laughter they generate largely stems from the incongruity between their body type and feminine actions(for Ahh-nold, think "Twins"), they have enough charisma to make you THINK they're funny.

Actually, that's no small feat. Remember Vin Diesel in "The Pacifier"? Would Van Damme, given the opportunity to star in a game-changing film like "The Tooth Fairy", add or detract from the spectacle of being costumed in a pink tutu and tights? Probably detract, so give Johnson his due; he pulls off the tooth fairy get-up with only a minimal amount of creepiness.

Now, after capturing the hearts and minds of children, and more importantly, their moms(even going so far as doing a cameo in Tyler Perry's "Why Did I Get Married Too?"), Johnson puts down the wand and picks up a gun and kills people for the first time in a long time.

It's time to bring the men back into his fold. Playing an ex-con named Driver, The Contortionist Formerly Known as The Rock goes on a bloody rampage, killing the people responsible for murdering his brother after a successful robbery.

Rest assured, the people he shoots in the forehead deserves their bloody comeuppance. Johnson isn't going to put his screen image at risk by killing the innocent, although it's open for debate as to who had it coming and who is worthy of a pardon.

After all, ten years is a long time. People can change, not all people, mind you, like the second name on Driver's list, a rapist who preys on young women, a person in which nobody mourns when he ends up on the receiving end of some vigilante justice.

It's the third and fourth names that prove to be more complicated. Echoing Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Volume One", the stripclub owner, the black man who pulled the trigger on the dead man in the urn, has a child, a college-aged son, just as "Copperhead"(Vivica A.

Fox) had a child, a young daughter, in which some may argue, is enough reason for the assassin to ply some compassion. But being a parent isn't enough redemption for either Driver or "The Bride"(Uma Thurman) to call the whole thing off, and spare their respective targets' lives.

The preacher, however, is given a reprieve. In a flashback, we see that the man of God tried to stop the slaying, therefore making Driver's decision to forgive and forget all the more easier. But what if the preacher was the trigger-man? That would be a real test of compassion on Driver's part.

Providing the killer with a real dilemma might have put "Faster" over the top. If Driver offed the man of God, then moviegoers would really have something to talk about. Just because you're born again, and God has forgiven all your sins, does the man who stands over you with the power of God in his hands have to do so, likewise? For once, wouldn't it be nice to see something truly transgressive in a studio film? "Faster" is not "Death Wish", but for all the wrong reasons.

As a hypothetical, "The Bride" would do a preacher, and that's because her creator thinks like an artist, not a marketer.