A MODERN-DAY WESTERN that owes so much to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that its trio of characters are introduced only as the Driver, the Killer, and the Cop (and the Killer has an Ennio Morricone ringtone!), Faster is… well, kind of fantastic. Wearing its inspirations proudly on its dusty sleeve, Faster‘s built like a low-budget ’70s revenge flick. In shades of burnished gold and copper, the action plays out: A former getaway driver (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) gets out of prison and promptly peels out in his Chevelle SS, ready to kill the bastards who double-crossed him. So tough that he sports the wounds from a bullet going through the back of his head and out his cheek, he metes out his justice in bloody slow motion. Meanwhile, both a junkie cop only a few days away from retirement (Billy Bob Thornton) and a calculating, remorseless assassin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) try to track him down.
The Rock, awesome as always, righteously glowers through these grimy proceedings (except, natch, when he cries a single tear); while everything in Faster swells with testosterone and melodrama, director George Tillman Jr. and writers Tony and Joe Gayton walk a fine line. Aware enough of Faster‘s time-honored clichés to cash in on ’em, the filmmakers and actors are still deft enough to keep things from veering into parody. It’s about as solid of a straightforward genre flick as we can expect these days—which means you should totally go see it, loudly cheering both when the Rock sates his bloodlust and when he lets out that one lonesome tear.
I saw a short clip of a standoff between The Rock and Billy Bob Thornton, and, while its never good to judge a whole movie based off a clip, it was ADD shot-and-cut to hell and back… shaky-cam, twitch lighting effects, ridiculous blue filters. While a modern western sounds a lot more fun than the movie the trailers are promising, after seeing that clip… no thanks. Only Neverdine-Taylor can get away with that ADD style, and that’s because they do it tongue-in-cheek. If this is the “straightforward genre flicks” we can expect these days, then we deserve better than films that make “Hard to Kill” look like Bresson.
DUDE. How could you leave out Southland Tales? It’s a weird failure of a film but “Le Roche” acts the fuck out of that eyebrow of his. Good stuff.
@cat & beard: Space issues. Namely, there is not enough room on the internet for me to write about SOUTHLAND TALES in a worthy manner, nor for me to expound upon The Rock’s phenomenal performance therein. I realize I’m like the only person who will publicly say this, but damn, I love that movie. So fucking weird.