Faster

Faster

Dwayne Johnson plays an impossibly self-sufficient ex-con who gets out of prison with only one thing in mind; to avenge the death of his brother who was killed in a double-cross after the two of them pulled a bank robbery.
It’s been many years. But the Rock has waited and planned and is going to kill everyone involved. In a matter of minutes apparently, because he is not being careful, is dropping clues like Jagger drops women, and is using a really noisy gun—he won’t last long. Oh, plus, when he gets out of stir, he runs all the way into town, into an auto junk yard, where he has a mint-condition Chevy muscle car stashed. With the afore-mentioned noisy gun in the glove-box.
The entire plot is Johnson going from thug to thug and killing them, after having a meaningful tête à tête about life, the universe, and everything. Except for the preacher. In the meantime, Billy Bob Thornton plays a strung-out detective ten days from retirement while he tries to manage a drug-habit, ruined reputation, an ex-wife and son, and catch the bad guy. His partner is Carla Gugino, a Rachel Weis look-alike, who isn’t happy about being stuck with the burn-out.
Oh, and to spice up the otherwise nonexistent plot, there is a hit man after Johnson. He is a super-rich Dotcom billionaire who is also an adrenalin junky-slash-perfectionist. As we watch, he beats Yoga. That’s right, like a video game, he goes through all the levels and has nothing else to master. The rich-boy with the violent hobby has some personal issues but is working them out. He’s deciding to propose to his über-hot girlfriend. Somehow, Johnson, a mouth-breathing ex-con bank robber, manages to elude, thwart, and defeat the hit man. Go figure. Not everyone who should, dies in this movie. They had to do it that way because everyone should have died but then they wouldn’t have been able to finish the film. This screenplay is the literary equivalent of Swiss cheese. It makes no sense, builds no interest, and makes us passionately indifferent to the characters. But it does have the Rock in it, so . . . . I went to see it.
It’s rated R for violence. I give it a three out of ten. The only people I can think of who might want to see it are Clark and James. Everyone else, steer clear.