Movie Review: Faster

It's been a while since Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has starred in any form of action flick. He had taken some time to try other projects, mostly of the comedic variety, after starting his acting career with a bunch of action films . Faster brings Johnson back to his action flick roots, but let's just say he could picked a better project than this for his triumphiant return.

Driver (Dwayne Johnson) has just been released from prision after serving a 10 year sentence for robbing a bank. During the aftermath of the robbery, his brother was killed. Driver's goal when released from jail is to kill everyone involved with his brother's murder. He has a list of names and revenge on his brain. The only thing that can get in his way are a veteran cop (Billy Bob Thronton) assigned to the case to track him down and a young killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a rich British man who kills for sport hired to kill Driver by someone involved in the murder of his brother.

Faster is a B-Movie. You can tell within the first 5 minutes, by the way the opening credits are presented and the fact that most of the character's names are descriptions and flash on screen when they are first introduced. I knew what I was getting into right off the bat and it's a pretty fun little movie. It fully embraces it's B-Movie persona. It takes no prisoners and doesn't really take the time to give any rhyme or reason for any of the killings. Driver has a list,he doesn't say much, he just kills people.

Dwayne Johnson does a decent job as Driver. He is an intimidating presence and that's really all he needs to do. I will say that I enjoyed him alot more in his earlier work such as "The Rundown" and "Walking Tall", those roles just worked better for him. Billy Bob Thornton was fine as Cop, it was good see him in a film, I haven't seen him in anything in a while.

One thing that does bog Faster down, is the movie moves too fast. I understand it's called Faster, but they shouldn't have taken the title literally when writing the script. Some scenes are just a mess and don't serve any purpose at all. Another issue is Oliver Jackson-Cohen, he was pretty horrible. His character was a punk rich kid and could have easily been written out of the script. The biggest issue is sometimes it takes itself too seriously, this is a B-movie, not a hard hitting drama, it tries too hard to be the latter at times.

Faster does have it's flaws, but I found it to be pretty enjoyable. It's a nice little slab of brainless, B-Movie fun. It's corny as hell, but it serves it's purpose. It could have better, it could have been worse. The Rock's return to action flicks is a welcome one, I just wish he had a better return film than Faster.

3/5 Stars