Faster (2010, USA)

What the hell is all of this plot doing in my Dwayne Johnson movie? Get with the program, folks – people don’t drag themselves out of the house on a chilly Thanksgiving day to watch a couple of guys wrestle with existential crises. They do it so that they can see the Rock blow a whole bunch of holes in a whole bunch of people. Thankfully, Faster isn’t entirely devoid of this type of action, and, as usual, Johnson is perfectly happy to play ball.

Unfortunately, screenwriters Tony and Joe Gayton have chosen to add a fair bit of story surrounding one of the cops on Johnson’s trail (an anemic-looking Billy Bob Thorton) as well as a playboy hitman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) whose only motivation seems to be his next thrill. This stacks the deck against not only Johnson, but a surprisingly strong cast of B-listers, including Carla Gugino, Tom Berenger, Xander Berkeley, Jennifer Carpenter, and – wait for it – Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. (There are at least three men in this film as big, if not bigger, than Johnson. How the casting agents managed this is anyone’s guess.)

The thing is, the premise here is so simple it could have pretty much been written on autopilot, and for once, probably to everyone’s benefit. Johnson’s character is fresh out of jail – ten years ago, he was the driver for a group of bank robbers, and after their last job, they were jumped, Johnson’s brother was killed, and Johnson went to prison. Now he’s out, and, naturally, he wants to do a little catching up with the gang that jumped him. Why complicate things? If you have artistic ambitions, don’t cast the Rock, and don’t tag your movie with the line “slow justice is no justice”.