Movie Review: Rampage

Certificate 12A, 107 minutes

Director: Brad Peyton

Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman

Rampage is, very loosely, based on the video game series of the same name. It begins with a statement that, in 1993, a gene editing method called CRISPR was discovered and that, in 2016, the method was classed as a weapon of potential mass destruction.

In Space, No-one Can Stop a Giant Rat

It then goes to an exterior view of a space station, Athena-1. From the outside, it looks like the station has suffered some damage; from the inside, this is definitely true, the place is an absolute mess and there is a corpse floating around. One crew member, Dr. Kerry Atkins (Marley Shelton), is still alive. She is in communication with the ground and says that the test subject has escaped. When the ground says that it is only a rat, she says that it isn’t anymore.

Dr. Atkins gets to the escape pod and tries to open it, but it won’t open. She is told that she can either go back and get the specimens, or she can die up there. So Atkins goes back to the lab. The station is clearly deteriorating, there is blood, body parts and other substances floating around, and the rat is much, much bigger than a normal rat, close to human-sized and with odd mutations. Atkins retrieves the samples and gets back to the escape pod, as fires break out and the rat chases her. Although she gets into the pod and escapes before the station explodes, the rat had damaged the capsule’s window, which shatters during re-entry, scattering pieces of debris through the atmosphere.

Gorillas in the Sanctuary

On the ground, Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson, The Fate of the Furious) is the primatologist at San Diego Wildlife Sanctuary. He is in the gorilla enclosure – although it initially looks like jungle – showing a couple of newbies around. The leader of the troupe of gorillas is a huge albino gorilla called George – a gorilla who, as Davis says, has a twisted sense of humour. Davis, as is pointed out, is not really a people person, far preferring animals.

Mutating Animals

That night, sample containers from the escape pod land in Wyoming, the Everglades and the gorilla enclosure. Each container proves less than intact, and George gets a blast from one, a wolf does in Wyoming and in the Everglades – well, it’s pretty obvious what will be affected there. When Davis gets called in the next day, George is out of the gorilla enclosure and is in the grizzlies’. Where he has killed a grizzly bear. Grizzlies are big, dangerous and not very easy to kill; only man successfully predates on them. George is also quite a bit bigger.

In Chicago, brother and sister head of Energyne, Claire (Malin Akerman) and Brett Wyden (Jake Lacy) are discussing the loss of Athena-1. Well, Brett is having more of a temper tantrum. The loss of the station has cost them a lot of money and apparently all of their research for Project Rampage – except Claire knows that Atkins got into the escape capsule with the samples and that there was a report of a meteorite impact in Wyoming (but oddly not in the other two more heavily populated states). The sample containers are designed to survive re-entry – but so badly that a refund is definitely due, given that it seems not one survived intact. Claire dispatches a wholly owned private military contractor to Wyoming to recover the container from there. The wolf that found it is now a lot bigger; the PMC soldiers do not come out of it well.

George is Affected, and Goes Wild

At the San Diego Wildlife Sanctuary, Dr. Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris) arrives and speaks to Davis. It seems that it is her research that has been used to create the pathogen that has infected George. Not only does it cause rapid growth, increased strength, resistance to wounds and rapid healing amongst other things – all from different animal species – it also increases aggression and violence in the affected animal. When George breaks free, he is captured by a government team and taken on board a plane by Agent Harvey Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), of no specified agency, for shipping, along with Davis and Caldwell. Davis and Agent Russell do not make instant friends.

Back in Chicago, Claire Wyden activates a broadcast to summon all the affected animals to them. Which results in George breaking free of his confinements and wreaking havoc on a soon to be no longer airborne plane, then he and the other affected creatures head for Chicago. Efforts to stop them by the military prove to be futile., and havoc ensues, as Davis and Kate – assisted by a somewhat cooperative Agent Russell – head to Chicago themselves.

Reviewing Rampage

The film is available in 2D and 3D with the 3D version seen. Given the amount of CGI used to make the giant rampaging beasts, 3D would probably have worked for the film. This is not a film full of surprises. There are huge mutated beasts – oddly, although every other creature affected by the pathogen mutates in some way, George just grows in size, rather than developing such as wings, spines or other pointy bits – fighting each other, soldiers and Dwayne Johnson. There is a lot of destruction and the military, as always, proves to be incapable of dealing with such creatures, no matter what plans they might have drawn up. The battles are impressive – and go through a lot of helicopters.

Claire and Brett Wyden fall into the “too dumb to live” category of villains, and are so one dimensional they could have been played just as well by cardboard cut-outs. It’s hard to criticise actors when they clearly have so little to work with. The too dumb to live comes from Claire’s brilliant idea of attracting giant, mutated, extremely aggressive and extremely hard to kill monsters to the building that you are in. Claire is the cold, manipulative, soulless CEO and Brett is the idiot younger brother. Neither is really standout.

Agent Russell is more interesting. He is also something of a typical character; the rather grating government agent who proves to be helpful and actually does care about doing the right things and protecting people. It’s done well, though, which is good. Dwayne Johnson does the sort of thing he is good at (although he’s actually a good actor as well, something that is rarely seen) – the big tough-guy role and Kate is the scientist who is trying to help. Rampage should not be looked at for in-depth character portrayals, or even a lot of sense at times, but it does exactly what it says on the tin – big, explosive, special-effect laden battles with monsters.