Dwayne Johnson

News, Reviews & Features

Skyscraper

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 12th July 2018

Almost all films starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson (or ‘Dwock’, as I will now call him, for ease) play on the fact that he is an impossibly-shaped human with overinflated balloon arms that are at constant risk of bursting and jettisoning his screeching cannonball head around the room. Not to mention that he acts like a small child that has somehow Freaky-Fridayed with his favourite He-Man figure and doesn’t know how long he has left to make the most of it. As such, Dwock always plays larger-than-life characters in larger-than-life films. Skyscraper, however, sees a return to relatively more serious action. It’s still an overblown, ludicrous mess, but it’s genuinely refreshing to see a film like this played with such sincerity. Such ridiculous, idiotic sincerity.

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Baywatch

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 24th May 2017

One of the many wonderful things about living on the same planet as Zac Efron is that he knows when and how to take his shirt off. It is a rare talent to look like he does with his abs out, accept that directors are going to want him to get his top off at least twice a film, and then to do so with enough of a sense of self-mockery that you don't think he's an absolute bell-end. Self-awareness is what got him and his co-star The Rock where they are today, and so a riff on Baywatch, sending up how daft it was, feels like just the ticket. So why isn't it sillier?

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Fast & Furious 8

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 11th April 2017

The Fast & Furious franchise is not big on learning. It doesn't really care for consequences. It is of the moment. Always in the now. If it were a person, it would be the kind of person who sincerely believes in the motto 'If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best'. Fast & Furious movies are wrongheaded and backwards but they don't care, because people vote with their wallets. They are Brexit. They are dumb. They make dumb look dumb. They are awful. They are brilliant. They are confusing and simple and ridiculous and serious all at the same time, somehow. Fast & Furious 8, a title and a number which give me great pleasure to say together, is all of these things and more.

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Moana

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 28th November 2016

It seems quaint that there was an ever an outcry about the 'death' of traditional hand-drawn animation when you watch a movie with such beautiful artistry as Moana. John Musker and Ron Clements did more than most to keep that medium alive, with classics like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin on their resumes - they even tried to bring back 2D animation with 2009's The Princess And The Frog, a good-intentioned throwback to the old ways. But when the sun sets on Musker and Clements' jaw-droppingly beautiful CG adventure Moana, no one will be mourning those outdated techniques. It is a film so vibrant and luminescent and immersive that it is impossible to argue that the future of animation isn't in good hands. Though its storytelling is a touch too familiar to qualify as a true modern classic, Moana is nonetheless a relentlessly entertaining spectacle that's rooted in authenticity and has a talent pool so deep you can swim in it.

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When can we stop pretending that Dwayne Johnson is an action hero?

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 30th May 2015

At this point in his career, Dwayne Johnson is stuck between The Rock and a hard place. He's already overcome an obstacle that has pinned many a man: a wrestling past that places him squarely in the same category as acting luminaries like Hulk Hogan, 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper and Jesse Ventura. Johnson has more acting talent in his pecs than these grapplers had in their entire bodies, but recently, The Artist Formerly Known As 'The Rock' has accepted roles that don't play up to his strengths - and when I say 'strengths' I'm not referring to his muscles. Dwayne Johnson is not an Action Hero, so can we stop treating him like one?

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San Andreas

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 27th May 2015

The modern disaster movie is at an impasse, and no amount of hurling Dwayne Johnson at it will succeed. There isn't a disaster you can think of - whether it's from the pit of the Earth or the darkest realms of outer space - that can't be rendered by a room-full of under-fed, under-paid GFX nerds in California. The only limit, therefore, is imagination, and sadly, San Andreas is a movie that's barely capable of coherent or rational thought. Director Brad Peyton borrows a series of second-hand set-pieces from the Roland Emmerich playbook; with buildings collapsing left, right and centre, San Andreas doesn't so much evoke powerful 9/11 imagery as it recalls entire sequences from other, better movies.

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Fast & Furious 7

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 23rd March 2015

For the first time since its inception in 2001, the Fast & Furious franchise was forced to hit the brakes. The unfortunate – but avoidable – death of Paul Walker in an automobile accident in November 2013 meant production on Part 7 skidded to a halt. Now, one year on from its planned release, Furious 7 rides into town after a respectful re-pimping – the muted colours on the poster suggests a star-studded funeral procession, but in actual fact, the latest instalment of The Franchise That Couldn't Slow Down is business as usual: cars, explosions, pecs (men), gussets (women), crap jokes and the most flagrant disrespect for physics since Sir Isaac Newton's naysayers suggested he stick his apple up his arse. You wouldn't call it a fitting tribute to Walker – I'm pretty sure the last thing his family needs to see is 250 cars exploding into fireballs – but you suspect it's what he, the fans and the studio would have wanted. So here we are. Amber turned to green. Let's go.

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Hercules desperate to eat donut placed on left shoulder

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 25th March 2014

So I think I found the film I'm going to mercilessly rip the piss out of.

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First official still of The Rock in Hercules ruined by picture caption

Movie News | Ali Gray | 24th March 2014

LOL j/k mr Rock sir.

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Pain & Gain

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 27th August 2013

In bringing to prominence the idea of the American Dream in his 1931 book Epic of America, James Truslow Adams wrote that it was "a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable". In doing so he likely didn't foresee that one day a film starring Marky Mark and The Rock would distort the notion with glorious excess, suggesting that it is a hollow hope when misinterpreted by the ignorant. Or that I would steal his quote from Wikipedia and pass it off as serious historical research.

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