We take a look back at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s first big movie as an action superstar, The Rundown, co-starring Seann William Scott.
It has been a long road seeing wrestling superstar The Rock evolve into the brand entertainment tycoon Dwayne Johnson of today. The hulking star has released a new Christmas adventure movie in time for the holiday season with Red One. Now, it seems like Johnson’s everywhere and he’s ingrained in pop culture. But back in the early millennium, he was still crossing over into acting and while he already had some success out of the gate, there’s one movie that was seen as his true arrival to be cinema’s next action hero. In today’s episode, we talk The Rundown and how it held up after 21 years.
The Rundown feels like the last breath of the kinds of action movies that dominated the 80s and 90s. This is the era when every movie from stars, like Stallone or Schwarzenegger, would mainly highlight their ability to fight hordes of bad guys, and the plots would usually come secondary. The movies were sub-genres by way of their star power: i.e. – “This is a Stallone movie.” or “This is a Schwarzenegger movie.”
This would be The Rock’s second starring role and third overall feature film, but he was already pretty established. In the WWE’s Attitude Era in the late 90s, he and Stone Cold Steve Austin would be the two most popular wrestlers in the business. However, he would have a slightly higher edge on Austin as his charisma and showmanship had an appeal that could transcend the professional wrestling world. He proved this mostly when he hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live and showing that he had comedic chops and a range unseen by most wrestlers who attempted to cross over into acting by this time.
The Rock’s movie career would actually have some help getting ushered in as Vince McMahon lowkey started WWE Films, which later became WWE Studios. McMahon executive produced Rock’s films as the earliest in the line of movies that saw more wrestlers getting acting roles. However, The Rundown would stand apart in quality due to the direction of Peter Berg. Berg was coming off his feature directorial debut with the dark comedy Very Bad Things. While that movie was more grimy and mean-spirited, his instincts for making a more accessible action comedy managed to create the perfect vehicle for this budding movie star. As well as marking first entry in the “Dwayne Johnson Jungle Filmography.” One thing Berg did was to help elevate Rock by not having him do all the heavy lifting (no pun intended), and surrounding him with actors like Rosario Dawson and Christopher Walken. Then, Stifler himself, American Pie’s Seann William Scott, would co-star as the foil to annoy Rock’s character, Beck, in this odd couple, buddy comedy dynamic.
The plot is about as simple as gets. But it’s no detriment to the movie. Beck is a debt collector for a loan shark named William Walker and he’s been given one last assignment: to retrieve his son Travis from the town El Dorado in Brazil. Seems simple enough. The problem is, Travis is on the cusp of making a major archeological discovery. He found a piece of treasure called The Gato and he’s not leaving without it. Beck and Travis butt heads in their initial encounter and things get more complicated when Hatcher, played here by Christopher Walken, needs to keep Travis from leaving Brazil so he could take The Gato for himself. Beck fights off the opposition and manages to escape with Travis in tow… although, the next part is a sequence that even fans of the movie have to stretch their believability muscles on.
After the comically long fall down a cliff which should have at least left our main characters crippled, the movie basically becomes a jungle version of Midnight Run as Beck and Travis are at each other’s throats while trying to navigate the treacherous environment, all the while, they get hunted down by Hatcher and his small army.
What makes The Rundown enjoyable is not only the love-hate rapport from our two leads, but it’s mixed in with Beck’s fish out of water experience in Brazil as even all his muscles can’t save him from aggressively horny baboons, indigenous fruit with mind-altering side effects, or booby traps set by locals. Travis, who supposedly is somewhat acclimated to the jungle, isn’t even immune from these factors himself.
As mentioned earlier, this movie felt like a coming out party for The Rock as the next action hero. There’s even a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger symbolically passing the torch to him in the beginning. When he appeared briefly in The Mummy Returns, The Rock was in an important role, but it didn’t require too much from him for his first time out. So, it didn’t sink or swim with him. He followed it up with the spin-off The Scorpion King and here is where we start to see the huge developments. No matter how you feel about the Scorpion King, there’s no question that Rock could only rely on his charisma for so much and you could sense he felt in over his head with his first starring role, which translated to some stiffness in his acting. In The Rundown, it felt like Rock did his homework, developed his character a bit more and he was head and shoulders above his first go-round. This time, he seemed more relaxed and his charisma became very complimentary to his performance.
Seann William Scott is a good contrast to Beck’s super seriousness as Travis injects a lot of manic energy into their scenes. Many were probably surprised to see him in a slightly more mature role than Stifler, but he still unleashes some of his zany comedic sensibilities when the time comes. Rosario Dawson makes a lot of her supporting role as Mariana. She is an unassuming bartender at first glance, then it’s revealed later that she is also the leader of a band of freedom fighters trying to overthrow Christopher Walken’s oppressive Hatcher. This is the era where Walken is starting to become a caricature of himself. This is not long after his famous “More cowbell” sketch from SNL and he’s definitely played for laughs as he delivers numerous funny lines in his signature dry way. Walken isn’t in a particularly meaty role, but he does get to switch from humorous to serious fairly often and it can remind viewers how good he can be at both.
Where the movie really shines thanks to Berg and the movie’s stunt team is in the creative action scenes. There’s nothing wholly revolutionary here, but what we get are some fun sequences that felt fresh and exciting. The movie starts off by subverting expectations and actually making The Rock look a bit like the underdog. When he needs to collect money from a nondescript football league quarterback (although they use XFL footage for the clips), Beck is all of a sudden pitted against the entire offensive line of the team. The kicker is Beck would rather not have to beat up on these guys since they have a legitimate shot of repeating this year.
Another great sequence comes in when Beck and Travis are deep in the jungle and are taken hostage by the freedom fighters. Ernie Reyes Jr. of The Last Dragon, Ninja Turtles and Surf Ninjas makes a memorable appearance as Manito, who is seemingly in charge of the freedom fighters. He’s incredibly jacked in this movie and Manito is amped to fight Beck, but while there’s a good size difference between the two, the movie subverts your expectations again by having Beck get his ass handed to him when Manito’s speed and agility go to work. Just watch how fast his punches and spin kicks are! And according to the commentary, the footage was not sped to make him look faster. The fight is taken up a notch when more soldiers get involved by swinging on vines and throwing him around onto trees.
What also set The Rock apart from other wrestlers was ability to adapt to the action scenes extremely well. While this movie also goes against the grain and downplays his physique, this was the era when he was muscular, but not monstrous. He was able to retain athleticism and some looseness that he didn’t look stiff or awkward during the fight scenes. He even moves quickly for a such a big guy.
The Rundown was well received by critics and audiences alike. Unfortunately, even with this movie’s relatively modest budget of $85 million, it wouldn’t be a hit with a worldwide gross of only $81 million. It ruled out any chances of a sequel, but as we now know, it did very little to stifle the movie career of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Peter Berg would also go on to have a successful directing career and even reunited with Johnson on their HBO show Ballers.
In the current time of overbloated budgets, overproduced visuals, underwritten scripts and too much lore to keep up with, The Rundown is worth a revisit to see a straight-forward, simple-concept, rock-em, sock-em good time. And luckily, there’s a new 4K Blu-ray release coming from Kino Lorber to see it in Ultra High-Def. Arnold told him to have fun and it looks like they did. They would even work in some inside joke references without overtly winking at the audience.
