While everyone is gearing up to watch Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson portray MMA fighter Mark Kerr next month in A24’s “The Smashing Machine,” he’s also busy laying the smackdown in the streaming charts this week. More than 20 years after its release, The Rock’s 2003 action-comedy “The Rundown” (directed by “Friday Night Lights'” Peter Berg) is suddenly back in the spotlight, climbing all the way to #4 today on Tubi’s Top Movies list as of this writing.
“This is a legitimately enjoyable movie and The Rock was brilliant in it,” one Reddit user raved in a recent post about the film — which also happens to be one of the earliest in The Rock’s filmography. “Unassailably one of his best roles, if not his best imo.”
Fun fact about “The Rundown,” in which The Rock plays a bounty hunter sent to Brazil for a final mission: It came just one year after his very first lead role in a movie, in 2002’s “The Scorpion King.”
The Rundown still packs a punch
One could make a case that when people talk about how they don’t make movies like they used to anymore, “The Rundown” is one of the kinds that they’re talking about. Is it a great or important piece of cinema? Of course not. Rather, it’s unapologetically entertaining, doesn’t take itself seriously, and doesn’t ask much of its audience. In the movie, The Rock’s mission is to go to Latin America and retrieve his boss’ rebellious son (played by Seann William Scott). Once he’s actually there, though, the bounty hunter gets tangled up with a villainous treasure hunter (Christopher Walken), and he has to team up with the boss’ son in order to survive.
I suspect the reason “The Rundown” is climbing up the Tubi chart at the moment is that it entertains people with a level of escapism too often missing from modern Hollywood titles — which, when they’re not preaching to you, are frequently just a rehashed amalgam of something that worked in the past and that someone lazily decided to try again with.
In “The Rundown,” all of the ingredients that would see The Rock go on to be one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars are present and accounted for. His charisma and his commanding physical presence are put to great effect here. “‘The Rundown,’ while not as effective or fun as ‘Walking Tall,’ stands on its own as a quite competent Dwayne Johnson vehicle,” one Rotten Tomatoes reviewer opines. “It’s got action, suspense, and some great performances.”
