acid reflects

Rampage
Directed by Brad Payton
Loosely based on the video game by Midway Games

This should be short, it’s critic-proof anyway. While the concept and trailer promised nonsensical fun, I didn’t find this fun at all. Rampage is relentlessly monstrous and ginormously dumb.

The most interesting sequence happens at the beginning of the movie and sets up the proceedings. Torn out of the pages of a decent sci-fi novel, a secret gene experiment conducted in a laboratory in space goes mortally awry – but not before a scientist saves the samples in several capsules. The capsules hurtle back into earth in three different locations in the US.

One of the capsules lands in the San Diego wildlife sancturay, near the enclosure of George – an amiable, smart and personable albino gorilla in the care of our action man Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who plays former Special Forces soldier Davis Okoye turned Dian Fossey-primatologist. George gets exposed to whatever it is in the canister, and he begins to grow exponentially and becomes uncontrollably agressive.

The same thing happens to two other animals that are exposed to the canister. Soon, three giant monsters are on the loose, rampaging across the states, heading towards the city of Chicago. An armed government agency led by Agent Harvey Russel (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) arrives to contain the situation, but the animals have grown so large that they seem to be unstoppable.

Meanwhile, the company behind the gene research is bent on getting to the monsters first, dead or alive. Malin Ackerman plays Claire Wyden, the greedy CEO of Energyne, and Naomi Harris plays Kate Caldwell, the geneticist who developed the pathogen, now helping Okoye to find a cure for George.

The blurb on the video game runs thus: “Take control of gigantic monsters trying to survive against onslaughts of military forces. Each round is completed when a particular city is completely reduced to rubble.”

While the blurb sounds simplistically cheesy fun, the movie is outright an action film from the moment George breaks out of his enclosure and at the same time the giant wolf wipes out the elite strike force sent by Energyne.

While this could easily, lazily written off as another “Big, Brainless, Fun” movie, the last is the questionable descriptive – mostly due to the carnage. And I just don’t mean body count – we see mauling, mangling, torn body parts and people getting eaten. Lots of it.

Would I make a different reaction had this been an R-rated film – just a bit, the story is still hokey and the R-rating would have lessened the pretense to show a pro-animals film. The monsters rampage through the city, reducing it to rubble, and the national guard makes a magical sudden appearance to shoot the monsters down with as many rounds as Neo’s rescue of Morpheus. This makes Independence Day: Resurgence look smart (not really, no.)

Yes I did find Ackerman’s character funny. Morgan as the constantly smug Agent Russel oozes with charisma. But the carnage! The body count. I came in ready for this ride, but the set pieces (the opening scene in the space station, Manganiello’s short-lived (!) encounter with the giant wolf).. those were in horror territory. I could hardly call Okoye’s and George’s sign language banter funny. Amusing? Maybe a bit.

This is not even kaiju category – not silly rubber-suit-guy Godzilla by way of Toho nor are there any multicolored jaegers piloted by teenagers with an attitude appearing to save the day – no.

At the same time, this is far, far from terrible territory where one finds the likes of Atlantic Rim, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, and the gazillion horror and sci-fi curiosities from the 1950s like Creature From the Haunted Sea or Fankenstein Meets the Space Monster.

Rampage goes to the B-section, not far from the Underworlds and the “Untraviolets” and the Resident Evils. But at the very least, Rampage has an adorable gorilla who gamely gives the audience the finger – twice, plus, there’s The Rock, whom many people admire (hey I like the Rock too, as himself.)