• THE THING: This movie: The Rundown
  
• THE HAIKU REVIEW:
        Deep like a puddle.
            Fighting. Shooting. Explosions.
                What did you expect?
  
• THE FULL REVIEW:
  I'm reviewing a movie which is starring someone who has named himself after a generic geological term. Oof.
  
  Actually, it was kind of fun. There are some nifty fight scenes. There are some deep entanglements. It's basically one big bungle in the jungle.
  
  The good: Action! There really was not much down time. There was some wild fight scenes. There was one where the Rock gets pretty obliterated by these South American martial arts masters. I never saw anybody punch so fast (except maybe Bruce Lee -- nod to Berchi).
  
  Christopher Walken was as Walken-esque as ever. That's always fun to watch. He did have some lines that felt like they were going somewhere but didn't. I can't really explain it, and it basically went with his character anyway, so I can't really complain.
  
  And the scenery was gorgeous. The photography was quite nice. There is one scene where they are focused on The Rock and his little clan of people in the woods, and the focus needs to switch to their pursuers -- there is a tremendous pan away and then zoom... it's really a nice effect. It obviously stuck with me. Look for it.
  
  The bad: (I don't think this is really a spoiler, sorry if it is...) The movie spents an unprecedented amount of time talking about how The Rock's character does not like guns. They harp on it for a while. It's brought up in about 1/2 of the scenes. And they lean towards explaining it, but they just never do. It seemed like such an important part of the tale, and it just got left dangling. What an icky loose end for me. Perhaps I'm expecting too much from a movie of this ilk.
  
  The ugly: Seann William Scott. I don't know why, but this guy annoys the piss out of me. He's probably supposed to but.... urg. Every time he got punched in the face, I wanted to stand up and cheer. He had a funny moment when he was trying to take a leak in the woods -- the problem: his hands were tied behind his back. Besides that he was just weasel-y. Perhaps it's the American Pie tie-in that bugs me -- it's one of the only movies I had to turn off in the middle because I despised it so. And I'm usually easily amused.
  
  Maybe it's the extra "n" he added to his name somewhere around 1999.
  
  Maybe I should rent "Dude, Where's My Car?" He was probably very good in that.
  

Final Score on the Chris worth scale: $6... The price of the matinee I went to see. It was just right.