'Faster' review: Dwayne Johnson vehicle is DOA

The Rock didn't start calling himself by his actual name, Dwayne Johnson, so he could make garbage like "Faster." This film is a comedown and indicates something is going very wrong in either Johnson's opportunities or his choices. In either case, he'd be better off cutting his overhead, taking a one-bedroom apartment somewhere and waiting for a director to take him seriously before allowing himself ever again to get treated like an ambulatory hunk of meat, as he is in this movie.

The thing is, within his sphere, Johnson can act. He has a fair degree of charm, and he even has - when called upon to demonstrate it - a healthy sense of the ridiculous. But watching him in "Faster," you could easily think Stone Cold Steve Austin is Olivier in comparison, because Johnson gets to do nothing but smolder, drive backward and shoot unarmed people in the head.

Here's an interesting truth about action movies, one that's surprising and yet borne out in practice: Revenge is a lousy motivator for action. There's no urgency about revenge. In the aftermath of some colossal wrong, an avenger might strike today or tomorrow or next week or next year. In fact, he could choose never to strike, and nothing would change. The desire for revenge exists almost entirely within the character and barely within the audience.

Of course, the limitations of the revenge plot become exponentially worse in a gauche, tasteless, clueless exercise like "Faster," which treats us to the sight of our hero blowing away defenseless people, as though that were a good thing. Or admirable. Or funny. Or cool. Actually, it's hard to say what effect director George Tillman Jr. is pursuing, beyond simply operating on the faith that, if it's an action movie, the more dead people the better. Under these circumstances, no matter how guilty our knucklehead-protagonist's victims supposedly are, it's difficult to maintain a rooting interest.

Screenwriters Tony Gayton and Joe Gayton try to energize the revenge formula by having our hero being chased as he's doing the chasing. Johnson plays an ex-con out to revenge his brother's death. Meanwhile, a drug-addicted cop (Billy Bob Thornton) is on his tail, and so is a thoroughly repellent hobbyist hit man (Oliver Cohen). The problem with this setup, however, is in the character motivations. Neither man-hunter is given any galvanizing cause to stop our hero. They barely care, and the audience cares less than they do. Nothing is personal. It's all mechanics, for them and for the filmmakers.

This isn't complicated: All we need from an action movie is an intense reason to care and a big payoff. We may want more from an action movie, but that's what we absolutely must have. We get neither in "Faster." A sure indication of the movie's complete failure is that, when it's over, it doesn't feel over. Instead of a resolution, it's just another dead body. We know that it's the climax only because the soundtrack insists on it.

-- Advisory: This film contains violence and drug use.

E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle