Here we go again, another videogame movie! The track record this genre of movies has is extremely poor and naming great movies is almost impossible. There have been enjoyable ones (still got a soft spot for the original Mortal Kombat), but usually they end up being very disappointing. There are various reasons for this, but usually you don’t play videogames for their stories. Videogames were never that cinematic and although that has been slowly changing it has always been about a player having fun executing the action which is happening on screen. Rampage was a game which basically had no story at all, except that you could control a giant monster which could smash buildings and eat people. It was all about the action, so the makers of this film only needed to do that right in order to stay true to the game. But as showing all action doesn’t work (I’m looking at you Michael Bay), some story is needed as well.
In this case that story revolves around Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson), a primatologist who works at a zoo. He can communicate with the primates through sign language and is in the process of adding a new gorilla to the group. When an experiment in space (done by an “evil corporation” of course) goes very wrong causing a station to crash on earth, a pathogen is released near three different animals. This pathogen changes them and turns them into huge monsters. One of them is a albino gorilla Davis is working with. Although he initially seems to be able to keep him calm, things escalate quickly and the gorilla escapes. Together with a geneticist (Naomie Harris) he tries to find out what is happening and stop the monsters from causing havoc.
First of all, like many other videogames movies before it, this isn’t a great movie, but is that what you should expect from a film with this subject matter? Of course not. This is all about fun and that’s exactly what this film offers. A great film to see with a couple of friends and have blast laughing at some ridiculous moments and lots of action. Sure there are some truly cringeworthy onedimensional characters, like the two villains who seems to have come straight out one of the Spy Kids movies, but I thought it just added to a movie that knows exactly what it is. Had this movie not starred Johnson it would have probably not worked as well as his charisma always seem to make crazy premises at least somewhat relatable. Rampage is a fun monster movie and that’s about it. And sometimes that’s ok.
[score7]