Rampage is a 2018 action adventure film about three different animals who become infected with a dangerous pathogen, and how a primatologist and a geneticist team up to stop them from destroying Chicago.
Dwayne Johnson’s latest flick, Rampage, is loud, hectic, fun…and that’s about it. To say you get what you pay for would be an understatement. Anyone who went into this film with improper expectations either didn’t watch a single trailer, or had zero familiarity with the classic video game. I wouldn’t venture so far as to call the movie good, but I’d be hard pressed to say it isn’t entertaining.
The movie kicks off at a space station owned by Energyne Corporation. Energyne was doing some dangerous testing by enhancing animal DNA to increase their speed, strength, stamina, etc, and this resulted in a giant rat taking over the space station and killing almost everyone on board. During a failed escape attempt, a scientist accidentally winds up scattering their toxins across a few points in the Earth’s atmosphere.
One of the sites where the toxin hits is at a San Diego center for apes that is inhabited by an albino gorilla, George. George stumbles across the toxin that he soon becomes infected with, and begins increasing in size at an alarming rate. His handler and best friend, Davis Okoye (Johnson), teams up with a former Energyne scientist, Dr. Kate Caldwell (Naomi Harris) to attempt to cure George before he can do harm to himself or others. Unfortunately, George’s aggression and strength keep increasing which leads to his temporary escape before he is sedated by government agents.
Meanwhile, the evil siblings that run Energyne, Claire (Malin Akerman) and Brett Wyden (Jake Lacy) want to try and salvage some of their toxin to save the company’s investment. They were able to track one of the toxin sites to North Dakota, which is where they send a team of ex-military contractors led by Burke (Joe Magniello). As the team arrives at the toxin site, they come to realize that it is too late as it’s already been released, and they come face-to-face with a giant, mutating wolf. Things don’t pan out for the contractors, which causes the Wyden’s to come up with a new plan of luring the animals to their headquarters in Chicago by generating a signal through a repurposed giant antenna.
Going back to George, we now have Agent Harvey Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) in the mix. He’s been sent to transfer George via plane to somewhere remote and safe. While aboard the plane, George, who is supposed to be heavily sedated, wakes up upon hearing the signal, and proceeds to escape from the plane by crashing it. He then begins his trip back to Chicago to find the source of the signal, teaming up with the wolf along the way. The animals make their way back to Chicago where they partake in some serious “Rampaging,” and even pick up a new friend when they get there. With the military out of ideas on how to stop the animals (besides bombing them back to the stone age), it’s up to Okoye and Caldwell to save the day, and try to save George’s life in the process.
As I said earlier, you get what you pay for with this movie. If you were expecting a movie that is based on a video game about giant, mutated animals that tear down cities to be a high qualify film, you should just put your money through a paper shredder. The reason that Rampage isn’t an unwatchable movie is because it doesn’t make the mistake of taking itself too seriously. The basis of the movie is about giant animals destroying cities, and director Brad Peyton makes sure we get our fair share of that. What makes a movie like this enjoyable is ensuring that it’s got quality action scenes, and mixes in a fair share of humor. In my opinion, Peyton did both.
Having said that, I think that the writing was overly weak at times. Again, was not expecting an Academy Award worthy screenplay, but some of the dialogue was just plain lazy. Another gripe that I had was some serious miscasting that took place. Ackerman, despite having poor lines to deliver, just did not fit in the role. It was hard buying into her turn as a villain, and what made it worse was the cheesy relationship that she had with her brother.
In good conscience, I can’t recommend that people shell out hard-earned money to see this movie in the theater. However…if you have an appreciation for exactly what you’re getting yourself into with this film, then I would definitely say to go see it in the theater and enjoy the experience. The audience was hooting and hollering throughout, laughing at the cheesy one-liners and enjoying the major destruction that was taking place. Being a huge fan of Dwayne Johnson and mindless action movies, I was not disappointed.