[yasr_overall_rating]
Primatologist Davis Okoye shares an unshakable bond with George, an extraordinarily intelligent, incredibly rare albino silverback gorilla but when a rogue genetic experiment goes awry and mutates this gentle ape into a raging creature of enormous size, Davis teams with discredited geneticist Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris) to secure an antidote.
Brad Peyton is a director I really like. He seems to be wanting to take over the mantle of the “master of disaster,” a moniker that belonged to Roland Emmerich for many years as the helmer of “Stargate,” “Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” and “2012”, a title that originally belonged to Irwin Allen in the 1970s, having made such classics as “The Poseidon Adventure,” “The Towering Inferno,” “The Swarm,” “Beyond the Poseidon Adventure,” and his last big-screen outing, “When Time Ran Out.” In case you don’t know my tastes as a movie reviewer by now, I LOVE escapism. You can release your “Manchester by the Sea,” your “Moonlight,” your “Gifted,” all fine films filled with heartbreaking and poignant performances, but I go to the movies to escape real life and have fun. And in that regard, director Brad Peyton delivers. 2015’s “San Andreas,” which also starred Dwayne Johnson as a rescue helicopter pilot trying to save his family from the mother of all earthquakes, was terrific, escapist fun, and with “San Andreas 2” having recently been announced, I can’t wait to see what they do on their next outing.
“Rampage” is actually based on a 1986 video arcade game of the same name. I remember playing it many years ago and in the game, you could either be George, a gigantic gorilla, Lizzie, a giant lizard, or Ralph, a huge werewolf. The point of the game was to go from city to city, leveling each one before moving onto the next but the military was out in full force so you had to get around them too. And that is pretty much the plot of “Rampage,” the movie. Of course, adding screen giant Dwayne Johnson can’t hurt and with his always charismatic onscreen presence, he has great fun along the way. Here he plays Primatologist Davis Okoye, a man who is more comfortable around animals than humans. He is the head of an anti-poaching unit based out of the San Diego Zoo and is friends with George, an albino silverback gorilla whom he rescued from poachers in the field years earlier. Both man and primate can talk to each other using sign language but one night, remnants of a space station that was orbiting earth, and which was conducting illegal experiments, crashlands in the animal compound. When George goes to investigate, a poisonous gas exudes from the container and he inadvertently inhales it. Other fragments of the space station crash in Wyoming and the Everglades in Florida, where a large grey wolf and crocodile, respectively, also become infected.
When Davis notices that George is considerably larger than he was the day before and that he killed a grizzly bear overnight, he knows that something is wrong. With stories of George all over the news, Dr. Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris) turns up at the zoo and offers to help Davis but he demands to know what’s going on. She explains that she was working on a scientific medical breakthrough that would help people with Cancer and which would eradicate the disease but the company she was working for, stole her plans and secretly used them for genetic editing on animals in order to make them larger than life. She says the company’s secret experiments took place on their space station but they abruptly ended after an on-board freak accident, which caused it to be obliterated on re-entry, causing its debris to be scattered around the country. Soon thereafter, George escapes and appears to be making his way to Chicago, where the company is headquartered but they quickly notice that the wolf and crocodile are also heading to the exact same location and Kate quickly comprehends that they are using a distress beacon to call out to the creatures, one that drives them crazy, and plan on destroying them once they reach their final destination. With the military planning on dropping a bomb that would vaporize ten square blocks once they reach Chicago, Davis and Caldwell team up with Harvey Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a government agent who wants to help them prevent the destruction of Chicago and its citizens.
“Rampage” is pure unadulterated fun. Try not to think too hard about the gaping plot holes or the constant lack of logic throughout, just leave your brain at the door and enjoy yourself. Sometimes it’s nice to go to a movie and just laugh and cheer for the good guys. It was great seeing Jeffrey Dean Morgan on the big screen but very hard to shake his Negan persona from “The Walking Dead,” I would imagine that is going to follow him around for the rest of his life but I hope it doesn’t become a hindrance because Mr. Morgan is a very fine actor, even without Negan attached to him at the hip. Dwayne Johnson and co. know that this sort of film cannot be taken too seriously but at the same time, if they don’t keep up appearances, the movie will fall flat on its face. Mr. Johnson appears in another action movie later this summer, a “Die Hard” knockoff called “Skyscraper” but as long as he continues arching that eyebrow, and beating the bad guys into submission, he will continue to have a fan for life in this film critic.
Available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD & Digital HD July 17th
