ScreenWize

This soulless revenge movie where the uber-slick, uber-hackneyed design takes precedence over story, character and theme may stir a few looking for a flick with fast cars, slow men and the rule of the gun, but it’s mostly laborious and often ludicrous. Trying hard to meld Sergio Leone’s extreme self-consciousness with Quentin Tarantino’s slick violence, director George Tillman creates a stack of oh-so-cool moments that are cobbled together to create a lumbering Frankenstein of a thriller.

Dwayne Johnson (formerly “The Rock”) plays a Clint Eastwood-like antihero (the man-with-no-brain in Johnson’s case) who rides into town in a supercharged Corvette seeking revenge for the death of his brother. Billed as “Driver” he’s been shot in the head and jailed for ten years, brooding over a heist that went wrong and making a list of those who put him away and killed his bro. Low on social skills and with a steel plate in his skull that seems to help him focus, he’s more Terminator than tea-party, grunting a few choice words before blowing away his victims. On his tail are a washed up detective-with-no-name (Billy Bob Thornton) and a professional killer-with-no-name (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who has given up his successful life as an IT billionaire in London to become a hit-man in California – as you do. His extreme wealth means he has plenty of fast cars and flashy guns to choose from when he goes after his man, and a glam long-legged babe (Maggie Grace) to welcome him back home after a hard days work.

As the names on Driver’s increasingly blood-soaked list are ticked off and the back-story of the heist revealed, it becomes clear there’s a piece of the revenge puzzle missing. Whilst it might keep you guessing for a few car chases, it’s a detail that escapes Driver’s one-track attention, so at least he’s in for a surprise.

Johnson’s role requires little more than a few rock-like grimaces and the slow muscular lift of his gun, and it’s the pounding car rides that carry the energy of film. Thornton adds some charisma but is swamped by the directorial flourishes that dominate the film’s aesthetic: colours stripped away, wacky camera tilts, freeze frames and slo-mo shots. What Jackson-Cohen’s Cockney character is doing in this film is beyond comprehension. The real concern, however, is the film’s moral tone: loaded with biblical references, it’s clear from the final shot that we’re celebrating the bad old days of an eye-for-a bloody eye.

Rating:

Filed Under: Reviews by Simon