Rampage Movie Review

Rampage

Rampage
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Joe Manganiello, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Malin Akerman, Jake Lacy, P.J. Byrne, Marley Shelton, Matt Gerald, Breanne Hill, Jack Quaid, Jason Liles, Demetrius Grosse, Will Lee
Director: Brad Peyton
Rating:

Bigger is not necessarily better and 'Rampage' proves it beyond doubt. Scaling-Up on the disaster quotient (from what can be best described as a tremendously shaky, 'San Andreas') Brad Peyton pits his muscleman a.k.a. Primatologist, Dr Davis Okoye (Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) against three massive, mutated, berserk monsters in this video game adaptation, based on the 1986 arcade game.

An experimental gene-splicing lab aboard an Energyne space station explosively disintegrates with the debris crashing to earth, right into the San Diego wildlife sanctuary. Davis, a onetime special forces officer and former wildlife ranger, who, while on one of his African enforcement patrols, had rescued a juvenile albino gorilla George from poachers, finds that the now adult George has suddenly grown aggressive and to a size unimaginable. Discredited, former Energyne geneticist Dr. Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris) sheds light on the reason and the two then embark on an eventful journey to Chicago trying to get their hands on the antidote before evil siblings Claire (Malin Akerman) and Brett (Jake Lacy) Wyden, Directors of Energyne Corporation's Project Rampage, can vamoose with it.

The ballooning imagination of a group of screenwriters, including Ryan Engle, Carlton Cuse, Ryan Condal, Adam Sztykiel, has the stampeding trio - extraordinarily intelligent, silverbacked, gargantuan-sized gorilla, a humungous wolf and a gigantic reptile wreak havoc while aiming to provide for all the thrills. The pseudo-science is a little too simplistic though. And once it serves it's the purpose of establishing the flaky reason, the narrative moves to monster mayhem- a succession of digitally enhanced set pieces that pushes the devastation to it's peak. DP Jaron Presant teams up with the VFX team to allow for some intimately vivid rendering of the genetically modified animals- but the screenplay doesn't do enough to get us entirely enthused. The over-extended run of devastation tends to become tedious. Ultimately it's Dwayne Johnson's hulking charisma and the IMAX projection that keeps you interested enough to sit through this otherwise turgid rehash of B movie clichés!

Watch Rampage Trailer

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