FASTER 2010
42%
Directed by George Tillman Jr.
Written by Tony Gayton and Joe Gayton
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Carla Gugino, Mike Epps
Synopsis
Released from jail after a robbery double-cross that left his brother dead, a getaway driver goes on a rampage after everyone involved.
Why We Love It
A tooth fairy clad in pink muslin, with frilly wings to match. A cabby who has to play daddy to some runaways. A player, on the football field and off, who gets suddenly saddled with an eight-year-old daughter. Do these sound like roles befitting a man who would one day be action king?
The second-half of the 2000s decade were a dark, dreary, laughter-filled (or, perhaps, laughter-attempted) time for fans of The Rock. Free from professional wrestling but making dreck like Doom (very Rotten at 19%), he utilized his brawn and appreciable acting chops in service of broad family comedies like The Tooth Fairy and The Game Plan. In essence: The Rock was, pardon the language, acting the jabroni.
But new decade, new you. In 2010, he executed a career U-turn like a Chevrolet Chevelle screeching on a desert road with Faster, a lean, mean revenge picture that left The Rock officially in rear view and starred, simply, Dwayne Johnson. Director George Tillman Jr. calls Faster a seventies throwback, going so far as naming Johnson’s character simply “the Driver,” referencing the 1978 Walter Hill movie, a year before Nicolas Winding Refn did the same in 2011’s Drive. But Faster is less neo-noir, more blaxploitation with its sizzling soul soundtrack, gritty shootouts, and sermonizing moral center. The only crook who escapes getting perforated by the Driver is the one who cracks open the Bible. Jesus saves, folks!
Faster came out at a time when audiences were starting to fully grasp the dominating power of so-called cinematic universes, along with serialized, long-form television storytelling. A self-contained throwback revenge picture was simply an aberration in this pop culture landscape. There’s no piece of plot development here you can’t see coming, but Faster’s the kind of movie where more is less in this department. Plot is for people with brains, and most of the Driver’s were blown out his skull during the double-cross. As an angel of death, he stomps through the underworld, dressing the scenery in red. There’s a fired-up commitment to Johnson’s nearly wordless performance, like he’s paying penance for the sin of making movies kids could watch. Considering the blockbuster action turn his career would take after this, it seems all is forgiven.