‘Walking Tall’
Directed by Kevin Bray
Starring The Rock Johnny Knoxville
MGM
Rated PG-13
82 mins
Grade: C
I must confess to liking Dwayne Johnson – the former pro-wrestler better known as the Rock – as an actor. He’s not a great one (at least not yet) but he’s one posessed of the charisma and presence of a born star. He’s being postioned as our official new action demigod, which sounds about right; unlike his precursors, who were stolid, monolithic slabs of granite, Johnson brings a certain quiet thoughtfulness to his roles. He’s the action hero who is also a soulful sensitive-guy warrior. If only his movies were as equally compelling.
“Walking Tall” is the kind of rundown, junk head-smasher that you could imagine the old guard (your basic Schwarzenneggers, Stallones and Van Dammes) making in the late 1980s. It’s actually a remake (of a 1973 drama starring Joe Don Baker) but it’s not too dissimilar from the Rock’s other films, the awful swords-and-sandals campfests of not so long ago; “The Scorpion King” and last year’s “The Rundown.” Like those films, “Walking Tall” has the musty, dilapidated feel of something buried in an attic.
The movie opens with a title card that says it’s “inspired by a true story,” but it’s one of those movies in which “inspired by” could – and should be – replaced with “exploited from.” The actual tale (it was the basis of the original movie) is that of Buford Pusser, a Southern man who was elected Sheriff in his small Tennessee town and used his position to single-handedly rid his town of corruption.
In the new “Walking Tall,” the action has been set in the photogenic Pacific Northwest, which allows from some very pretty shots of very pretty pine forests. Pusser has been renamed Chris Vaughn (what big-screen star would actually play a character named Buford?), and he’s now a soldier returning back home to find that the old lumber mill has closed but a guady, neon casino has opened in its stead.
How do we know that Jay Hamilton (Neal McDonough) the casino owner and an old high school rival of Chris’ is the bad guy? He’s impeccably dressed, with an icy blue glare out of the Paul Newman School and the sharkish smug grin of a suburban-scum car salesman. He pals around with thick-necked goons (Chris’ pals are flannel-shirted “average” dudes.) He also looks like the world’s first metrosexual yuppie jock; he’s too conventionally pretty to be anything more than the smirking corporate villain.
The director, Kevin Bray, at least keeps things moving swiftly. Chris returns home; Chris antagonizes Jay and his lackeys; Chris gets elected sheriff and metes out justice with the assist of a large wooden club. “Walking Tall” clocks in at a lean 82 minutes, which means that Bray has carved off most of the fat. The problem is, most of the meat is gone too.
There isn’t much of a plot here – it’s more like an excuse to string together a series of brutal (but PG-13 safe) beatings. The Rock punches, kicks and uses a 2×4 to womp the unlucky faceless extras. It would be nice to say that you can revel in watching the Rock do what he does best, but these fights aren’t anything that hasn’t been hit before. The characters seem to exist solely as props, and they include Chris’ biracial family and the sexy blonde looker (Ashley Scott) who acts as the token love interest and seems to exist to let teenage boys ogle her as she stands in a red bra shooting a gun.
“Walking Tall” is as flat and generic as an action film can be; one wishes that it had a little more ingenuity, or was at least less competently made to triumph as a bad-movie goof. This time, even the Rock goes down with the ship. But Johnny Knoxville, as Chris’ loyal comic relief best friend, manages to rise above the material. Knoxville, the idiot-boy leader of the “Jackass” crew, may forever be known as the guy who willfully underwent ritual torture (taser gun experiments, baby alligator nipple clamps, etc.) in the name of comedy. But he’s a charismatic scene-stealer himself, and the only one who helps make “Walking Tall” stand a little taller.
