Rampage (2018)

Movie Info

Eating people was the best in Rampage!

When an illegal experiment in space goes wrong, Energyne’s product crashes to Earth and threatens to destroy the world.  Three canisters of a special agent fall to Earth and a gorilla, a wolf, and an alligator are exposed to substance.  Now the gorilla George’s trainer Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson) and a former Energyne employee Dr. Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris) are teamed with agent Harvey Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) in an effort to stop the rampage…but Energyne owners Claire Wyden (Malin Akerman) and her brother Brett (Jake Lacy) have other plans.

Directed by Brad Peyton, Rampage is an action adventure film.  The movie is based on the 1986 arcade game by Midway and was relatively well received by critics.

Rampage was a game I always played in the arcade.  With multiple players, it was a great “team” arcade game (I always liked being the lizard monster).  The idea of a Rampage movie was pretty awful and with video game movies generally being awful, I didn’t have much hope.  Surprisingly, Rampage was a fun, popcorn type movie.

Ok…they killed the monsters but they destroyed Chicago and the economy…great.

You can’t go into a movie about a giant ape, giant wolf, and giant crocodile with a lot of hope for an Academy Award nominated original screenplay.  Despite this, the movie does do a nice job setting up the story and keeping it moving.  There are the typical action-film over-the-top characters (primarily the Wyden siblings and Harvey Russell), but the movie doesn’t fall into complete camp which it easily could have done.  Instead, Rampage provides a classic big budget explosion filled action film.

While Dwayne Johnson generally overdoes all his roles, he seems a bit toned down here for the better.  There are some classic Johnson type movements, but he feels a bit more natural here.  Naomie Harris is a solid costar who isn’t the damsel in distress in the movie.  Jeffrey Dean Morgan does provide camp as the cooler than cool agent that helps Harris and Johnson and Malin Akerman and Jake Lacy might as well be the Gene Hackman and Ned Beatty of the picture since they feel super-villains who fell out of a Christopher Reeve Superman movie.

The wolf can fly…

The special effects are also top notch.  It is amazing to see how far computer animation has come.  “Living” creatures are often the toughest to animate since they have to live and move like real creatures, but Rampage does a nice job combining the giant monsters with the sets and locations…George alone shows how much movies have come since “Amy Sad” in Congo.

Rampage is a fun action romp.  The summer movie season is creeping in earlier and earlier and movies like Rampage (released in April) feel more like a Fourth of July blockbuster than a sleep spring film.  The movie didn’t perform as well as some hope in the United States but boasted an impressive box office overseas…so we’ll see if George will live to fight another day.