Walking Tall

Now that Arnie's the Governor of California and Sylvester Stallone has wisely decided that nobody is remotely interested in his career any more, there's an opening for the rippled action hero in Hollywood, and sometime wrestling star, Dwayne Johnston (The Rock to you, mate) seems the most likely candidate to fill it. A man whose range makes the aforementioned Sly look like Sir John Gielgud, The Rock doesn't exactly attempt to stretch his limited abilities in this ramshackle buddy action comedy, which sees him teaming up with erstwhile Jackass star, Johnny Knoxville. Based on a little-known 1973 movie, Walking Tall sees his Rockiness playing Chris Vaughan, a former Special Ops agent who yearns for the quiet life. Returning home to his backwater Washington town, he discovers that a former schoolmate, Jay Hamilton (Neil McDonough, Band of Brothers, Minority Report) is ruling with an iron fist. Hooking up with another old pal (Knoxville), Vaughan, armed with his trusty piece of timber, sets out to clean up the streets and save an old flame from the clutches of the nefarious Hamilton.

About the most charitable thing that can be said about Walking Tall is that nobody involved in the production seems to take it all that seriously. But, as a better critic than I once ventured, fun is the great alibi of the banal. Although The Rock's charisma grows with each of his celluloid outings - he was utterly static in The Scorpion King and he's progressed to just wooden in Walking Tall - there's still much work to be done. The plot follows an unnecessarily predictable arch, with precious little characterisation or dimension, and there's a rather distasteful tendency to depict all female characters in a pathetically one-dimensional light.