I had hopes for Faster (2010, George Tillman, Jr.: Men of Honor). An action movie starring Dwayne Johnson (Be Cool) is enough to rake my money. But this movie was not an action movie. I feel a little badly that maybe the movie is in a catch-22. One of the things I hate most about action movies is that in the opening scene they make the hero out to be a complete bad ass, but then the big fight happens and they can no longer be true to the scope of his bad assedness. I am really thinking of superhero movies here.
Faster does not have that problem. He is a bad ass and he continues to be a bad ass throughout the movies. So the 5 death scenes are all terribly short. Instead the movie turns into a meditation about death. Sadly, though, this movie doesn’t have the mental horsepower to do this meditation very well. Instead all we get is Johnson breathing heavily like he just ran a marathon and is now working himself up to doing the dirty.
The twist at the end? Why does every movie these days feel the need for a twist? If they would just tell the story well then they would need to contrive some mystery to keep us interested. especially when they already have our money. In any case, the twist was not a twist at all. It was completely obvious. So much so that each hint at it only served to offend instead of titillate.
And the sound. How can I forget the sound? So, Johnson carries a large pistol, it really is a hand cannon. Each time it is fired, the sound makes us feel it. It was loud. Way too loud. Normally I would say the mixing levels were off, but this had to be intentional or else it would have been fixed.
HPATDH:P1 easily beats Faster. This makes me sad. I so wanted Faster to be even remotely worthy. I also really wanted to see HPANTDH:P1 go down again.
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