Walking Tall Movie Review

Walking Tall is an extremely irrelevant yet marginally enjoyable exercise in ass-whupping that gets extended mileage on the charisma of its star, The Rock. With an easygoing manner that can careen from laconic to vicious in a matter of seconds, Mr. Rock (aka Dwayne Johnson) is an action hero for a new generation. More expressive than Arnold Schwarzenegger, more intelligent than Sylvester Stallone and more charismatic than Patrick Swayze, The Rock seems the easy successor to the no-fuss-no-muss action genre that made movies like Rambo and Road House minor stops on the cultural map. And with its no-nonsense approach towards smashing things up and beating and shooting folks, Walking Tall turns its brisk 86 minute run time into a breezy exercise in action adrenaline, so quick and dirty you hardly have time to digest it before it's gone.

Unfortunately, its smooth professionalism and bland politics (Drugs are bad! Mean people get beat up! Clean living rules!) won't qualify this Walking Tall as a cult classic, unlike the 1973 film it's taken from, which spawned a whole genre of grisly "hixploitation" films. The original Walking Tall was inspired the real-life shenanigans of the wonderfully named Buford Pusser (Joe Don Baker), a Tennessee man who moved his family back to the small town where he grew up, only to find it overrun by massive hillbilly corruption. Talking a big ol' plank of wood, Pusser proceeded to cut a swath through the grimy crime of the town, and got elected sheriff for his trouble. However, when the bad guys retaliated by murdering his wife, he got madder than a hellcat and beat `em up some more and killed a good number of them. He may not have a kilt himself a b'ar when he was only three, but Pusser became something of a folk hero, so much so that Walking Tall got two sequels and a TV series – and this all before Road House was a glimmer in anyone's eye.

The Rock's Walking Tall follows pretty much the same trajectory, but unfortunately changes the protagonist's name to the generic Chris Vaughn – pretty much an indication of the laundering this story will go through – and sets him up with parents, a sister and a nephew instead of a family of his own. Chris is a soldier, come back to work at the mill in his old hometown. But the mill's been closed, a casino's been erected and drugs are being sold to young kids, including Chris' nephew. Taking on the town's bigwig-cum-druglord (Neil McDonough, all peroxided hair and a smile revealing whiter-than-white caps), Chris gets knocked down a couple times, but invariably gets up again. Soon some good-natured fisticuffs give way to monster gunplay, bone-splitting combat and a showdown at the old mill, where axes are wielded and large cedar planks give credence to the adage "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

Does it all go The Rock's way? You bet. Is it all totally predictable? Absolutely. Is it any fun? The surprising answer is, yes. Director Kevin Bray (All About the Benjamins) keeps the action so briskly paced that you never have time to give anything a second thought, like the fact that Chris finds sexy peep shows okay – until he realizes it's his high school sweetheart he's objectifying. And The Rock finds a great foil in Jackass Johnny Knoxville, who's a ripe and ripely funny second fiddle, and is even able to pull off a couple action sequences with unabashed glee and credibility. Still, by stripping its hero of a wife and kids, and never putting any of his loved ones truly in harm's way, Walking Tall sands away its gritty, rough edges into familiar PG-13 style antics, all bark and little bite. Basically, it's a just a barroom brawl on steroids, with lots of bareknuckle punches that only occasionally hit home. It's vicious, yes, but never visceral.