Rampage movie review

Here's what you need to know; life's about to take a turn for the fantastical for Primatologist Davis Okoye when one of his apes begins to grow at an impossible rate. But George isn't alone, as a dangerous contaminant has been unintentionally released into the world, turning the creatures it infects into nightmarish monsters, and as the threat grows, literally, Davis realises how out of their league the military is against the threat, and that he's George's only chance of survival in the coming apocalypse.
This film as an anomaly to me; clearly Hollywood still thinks it can make a good movie based on a video game, and I reckon that they can, I'm just waiting for them to make one that doesn't fall somewhere between decent and dreadful. The anomalous part is that it's a movie based on Rampage, a series that has been dead for twelve years, I suppose Halo, Metal Gear Solid, Watch Dogs, Uncharted, Dead Space or any other major game release in the last decade that might be at least a shred better suited to the big screen was off the table, this film clearly seems to come more from the Battleship school of thought. Wow, haven't even started the review yet and I already sound like I hated the film, so let's slow down, and look at this film honestly.

Rampage's opening is not what I was expecting, but it opens up an idea that I think the film could have done more with. The opening is basically the last 20 minutes or so of last year's Life, you know, that film that scared me and my friends utterly witless. For this and another scene in the first act, it almost looked as though they were going for a horror vibe with the film, first with a space station being destroyed by a mutated lab rat, then with a squad of soldiers being wiped out in a forest by Ralph (the wolf.) These two scenes aren't remarkable when viewed as horror, they rely a bit too much on the good old trick of loud audio cues every time something happens, but this isn't a horror, so that's me projecting onto the film, rather than looking at what it does have. Right out of the gate, the film presents a pair of likable characters in Davis and George; Dwayne Johnson is basically playing Dwayne Johnson, and that's neither surprising, nor a bad thing from the right point of view, but the friendship he has with George is surprisingly well done, or better done than the relationship with Chris Pratt and his raptors at least. George is no Caesar, but the scenes in the film where he isn't out of his mind on the rampage virus present a very funny, very vulgar guy with a believable and kind of sweet friendship with Davis. The obligatory backstory scene that provides George's origins is expectedly ham-fisted, but it does at least explain how a Primatologist knows how to kill things, which obviously becomes useful in the film's finale. Naomi Harris' character is easily the least memorable lead in the film, as her job seems purely to be delivering exposition, which always makes for a compelling character. And then there's Negan, and I don't mean that as a Joke, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's character in this film is Negan, or rather what would happen if Negan was a cowboy, which also isn't a joke. He was probably my favourite character in the film, but I can imagine that if you hated him in The Walking Dead, you'll be less fond of Jeffrey Dean Morgan in this film than I. So far then, that's a serviceable line up, two likable actors falling comfortably into their respective typecasts, and Naomi Harris just kind of being there, but for me film really took a turn for the worse with its villain; Wyden, but that's a point that needs further expansion.

Easily the biggest two issues that bog this movie down are a plot that makes no sense, and an inconsistent and wonky tone. This is a monster movie, in the same vein as films like King Kong or Godzilla, incidentally two films from which the Rampage video games take influence. The issue however is that this film's plot is really dumb, complete with a sinister organisation doing illegal experiments, a hyper corporate, morally empty CEO villain, and an action hero turned zoologist becoming man's last hope against giant monsters. That villain really does hurt the film in the long run, as even by this film's own standards, she's absurd. She so blatantly villainous, in fact stupidly so, being the CEO of a major company, and also thinking that putting millions of lives at risk by field testing your new bioweapon is a good idea. She even comes complete with a dim-witted minion, and it derails the film every time it cuts to her. The film establishes a timeline of us inventing genetic editing, which can, from the right point of view, explain away a few of this film's absurdities, like how these monsters grew so big, so fast, and how Ralph and Lizzie (the crocodile) look and act nothing like their uninfected, real world counterparts. But then there's things like the zoologist who knows how to operate an Attack Helicopter's weapons and literally can't die, not even being slowed down with a bullet in him, or the super villain whose plan is so stupid that the only thing missing is a volcano hideout. The problem this presents is tone; the film is very much like Pacific Rim: Uprising in the sense that it foregoes a compelling story for mindless action, but like that film, it doesn't commit to style or substance, the story is executed sloppily and nonsensically, and it's not as cool as it wants to be in the action. I said before that this film is in the same vein as Godzilla and King Kong, but absent is the substance of Godzilla, this film has no grand metaphors for contemporary societal fears or ominous, Lovecraftian undertones like the 1954 and 2014 films, nor does it have the adventurousness of Kong, and if was going for style, again, Pacific Rim could run rings around it. This film lacks the flash of a film like Pacific Rim, and without a compelling story, the film's biggest blessings become its typecast mains, and while they're fine, the film ultimately comes across as forgettable.

This is an action film and a monster film before it's anything else, and as already stated, as a monster film, it's unremarkable, but what about an action film? There are many films that are comparable to what this film strives for in its action, films like Transformers, Roland Emmerich's Godzilla, and Battleship, films with sloppy writing, and-or acting, and-or directing, but that succeed in the very imprecise art of being mindless entertainment. Rampage's finale where the three monsters are tearing up Chicago is entertaining, even I won't deny that; seeing Ralph and George ripping through the streets and cleaning up infantry is dumb and enjoyable, and when Lizzie emerges from the river, it was all very reminiscent, and it was cool. It is, not all that different to Michael Bay's Transformers, ridiculous, with Dwayne Johnson out manoeuvring the monsters and hurting them with a little grenade launcher, after tanks and .50 Cals and a 30mm cannon did nothing, also bear in mind that he is doing this after being shot in the torso, because Dwayne Johnson is apparently a literal god. It's the kind of action that falls apart when you think about it, even just a little bit, but will get the job done if all you want is big, loud, visually stimulating action for the sake of action. Rampage's titular rampage is without a doubt the high point of the film, never mind the lack of style, or the minor grievance that the effects aren't always up to snuff, most notably the green screen, which is occasionally horrible. Something I do like in the film's finale however was the brutality of the fighting, Lizzie and Ralph and George turning on each other and literally ripping pieces off one another is more like it, at least for me, me who gets a bit of a tickle every time he watches Godzilla breathing fire down the MUTO's neck. And though getting impaled through the face or being mutilated in a death roll isn't quite as brutal, it's still pretty sweet. Also pretty sweet is that this film really stretches it's 12 rating, with people being eaten and crushed by debris, a vulgar ape, and literal piles of bloody dead bodies, it was quite amusingly surprising to see a severed hand on the big screen given how many families were in the cinema for the screening, but of course I'd think that, I'm just a sadist I suppose.

Hell of a day, huh?
Rampage is what it is; a loud, big, violent spectacle build for the big screen, a film that's enjoyable, so long as you don't think about it too much. If you did that, you'd find a film with likable, unsurprising characters, but a story that struggles to make sense, made even worse by a villain that represents a massive tonal inconsistency in the film. The film is really, really dumb, but that is at least partially absolved in the finale, where I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having fun, even though it's not the best monster or action movie out there, not by a long shot. Rampage is unremarkable and forgettable, but serves its purpose of being entertaining, if you watch Rampage, you'll probably get exactly what you think you'll get, I had fun watching it, and I'd say it's worth a watch.