After spending time softening his image (and fattening his bank account) as the star of several cuddly family comedies (including Tooth Fairy and The Game Plan), Dwayne Johnson, the artist formerly known as The Rock, returns to the action genre with Faster, a grim and rather tedious revenge thriller. Johnson’s greatest strength is his natural charisma, which is why he does so well in comedies, and his best roles allow for humor even when he’s playing a tough guy. Faster, however, plays things completely straight, with Johnson as an ex-con so focused on vengeance that he barely even has any lines for much of the movie. All the steely stares get old quickly, and once it becomes clear that director George Tillman Jr. isn’t going to spice up the ludicrous story with style or creativity, Faster settles into a predictable rut.

The Details

Faster

Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Jackson-Cohen

Directed by George Tillman Jr.

Rated R.

Beyond the Weekly

Official movie site

IMDb: Faster

Rotten Tomatoes: Faster

Johnson’s Driver (the main characters are given designations only, not names, indicating the level of effort put forth) isn’t the movie’s only focus, though: There’s also Billy Bob Thornton as Cop, who ends up on Driver’s tail after Driver kills the first of the men responsible for his brother’s murder. And then there’s Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Killer, a suave hitman hired by a mystery figure to take Driver out. The movie wastes time with sketchy character development for all three, which never rises above tired clichés. Killer’s entire section of the movie is superfluous, and Thornton delivers his performance with a smirk that makes it hard to take Cop’s drug problems and marital issues seriously.

If only the movie had smirked a little more, it might have been a fun exercise in camp, as it starts out to be. But Tillman isn’t the kind of stylist needed to make this another Kill Bill or Crank; instead it’s assembly-line junk right down to its glaringly obvious twist ending.