Cinema Review: Faster (2010)

In Faster, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson sometimes seems to be trying so hard to atone for his recent family-friendly output that it comes across slightly too desperate to be cool and hard-edged. His character, for instance, is only ever referred to as Driver, even receiving an on-screen caption naming him that. He's a man of very few words, but his muteness sometimes seems overly affected. There are whole scenes where characters talk to him and he says not a syllable back to them, yet the person doing all the speaking doesn't even notice. That said, Johnson exhibits good screen presence here, growing into a role that is well suited to his physicality. When he does talk, his delivery is believable and natural; he's clearly improved in the acting department since his Scorpion King days. His action prowess was, of course, never in doubt, which Faster also gives him opportunities to prove again.

Change Faster's lead character to a woman, and the plot would sound a lot like the film Quentin Tarantino had promised to make with Kill Bill: a 90-minute tough and gritty revenge flick. Johnson's Driver is double-crossed after a bank heist, and shot point-blank in the head. Somehow he survives, and after a prison sentence, sets out on a quest for vengeance against those who wronged him. A simple, and familiar, framework. Faster complicates it by making it into a three-hander, also following Billy Bob Thornton and Oliver Jackson-Cohen, similarly identified on-screen as simply Cop and Killer respectively. Thornton is enjoyable, if hardly giving his all, but the "Killer" thread - following an English assassin with the body of Adonis as he is assigned to track down Driver - feels like unnecessary padding, Jackson-Cohen coming across rather wooden.

The three-pronged narrative prevents the film from feeling like the lean, quick thriller that it should do. Ironically, given the name of the film, it moves quite slowly, and certainly feels longer than its 98 minutes. Had the film devoted the majority of attention to Driver, it would have probably been more gripping, as these sections - with some memorably abrupt deaths and well-handled, if brief, action scenes - are easily the best. The sort of neo-noir trappings of the plot are undercut by its lack of single-minded devotion to its central character, but the film does at least establish an appealing sun drenched yet sordid atmosphere. A late twist is telegraphed - it's the sort of mystery where there's only one culprit - but the film does then manage to surprise with an additional, if improbable, turn of events. Just a shame it struggles to get to the finish line.



Summary
Faster never quite gels, spreading its attention between three characters when two would have been easily enough. The action, including of the vehicular kind, doesn't kick into high gear either.