Walking Tall

Traditionally 'wrestling movies', that is wrestling themed films, have being unsuccessful at the box office and pretty terrible, the only exception being "The One and Only" which is a great film (possibly due to the fact that it's star isn't a wrestler). I'm a long time wrestling fan and can admit that 'sports entertainment' will never ever work as well in the cinema as it does in the tv soap opera format. The obvious logic therefore is to make films starring wrestlers, but not strictly on the subject of wrestling. Rowdy Roddy Piper scored the starring role in John Carpenter's "They Live", a solid cult classic by any standard, why couldn't this formula work?

Enter The Rock! The most electrifying man in sports entertainment! If any wrestler had the look and charisma to carry a feature film, it is the great one. At least in theory..............

"The Scorpion King"? That was so bad, it made "Conan the Destroyer" look like "Conan the Barbarian"! "The Rundown"? The brilliant script for that film manages some near impossible tasks, it makes Seann "Stiffler" William Scott painfully unfunny, Christopher Walken pathetic (Tooth Fairy speech!?), presents The Rock as the cliched 'hero with tragic past' type character without provide a shred of backstory (why won't he use guns?) and to top it all off in a moronic attempt to inject depth and a social conscience into the shallow garbage, it rips off a scene straight out of "Powaqqatsi"! The action scenes are rather bad (HollyWood will never EVER come close to Asian films in action, no matter how many sellout choreographers they bribe in from Hong Kong!!!) and the film runs 15 minutes too long.

So what about "Walking Tall"? Unfortunately it's just another over-hyped horrible Hollywood remake. Is that all they do? put out terrible remakes of great films, "Dawn of the Dead", "The Ring", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Planet of the Apes" etc, etc. Haven't they already used the original "Walking Tall"? 'Hacksaw' Jim Duggan? In a recent episode of Raw, The Rock was doing Mick Foley's 'This Is Your Life' during which a "critic" told Rocky "if you'd shown this much vitality, maybe 'Walking Tall' wouldn't be a walking piece of crap!", I'm not sure why that line of dialogue was scripted, simply because it is a dead right observation! Of course this won't stop J.R.'s endless plugging, how many wrestlers have being "walking tall" on their way to the squared circle lately?

I want The Rock to succeed, sincerely want his films to be good, he's one of my favorite wrestlers along with Mysterio and Flair. The Rock on the mike is brilliant, in fact better than brilliant, he's electrifying! The Rock on talk shows is charming, funny and totally entertaining. So why is the magic missing from every film he's in?

The answer is simple, The Rock has a ton of charisma and personality, but sadly is not a highly skilled actor. Sure his promos are some of the tightest in sports entertainment, but outside The Rock persona, he doesn't have much of a range. This is in no way a mean spirited insult, just the honest truth. But many of the most respected actors play only one character repeatedly, Robert DeNiro for example. So what is wrong with letting The Rock play the Rock? Why force him into stiff uncomfortable cliched hero roles? Why not make a movie, or better yet a series of movies, in the James Bond style with The Rock as a secret agent putting the smackdown of the bad guys and getting a Bond sized share of pie along the way? A series of "Shaft" style films with The Rock jive talking the jabroni's and swinging with allot of groovy pie in the process? There is no reason why The Rock 'as is' cannot be placed in any number of films. That would be giving fans what they want, lets face it, most of the audience who went to see the films so far didn't go because the plot interested them, they went to see The Rock, I went to see The Rock.

Real wrestling fans should avoid these movies, don't give them your money because if they are successful The Rock will continue to be cast in pure crap like "Walking Tall", rather than either being forced to return to wrestling, which would not be a bad thing at all, or force producers/directors/writers to drastically increase the quality of the films, like that will ever happen.