The Rundown

The Rundown starts in Los Angeles where tough bounty hunter Beck (The Rock) decides he wants out of the business to open his own restaurant & accepts one last job from his mobster boss Billy Walker (William Lucking) to make enough money to realise his ambition. Beck has to find Billy's son Travis (Seann William Scott) who has disappeared in an Amazonian village in Brazil somewhere & bring him back to Los Angeles, sounds easy & Beck has no trouble finding Travis but also finds that the guy who runs the town is an evil businessman named Hatcher (Christopher Walken) who uses the natives as cheap labour to mine for gold in appalling conditions so he can get rich & when Hatcher discovers that Travis has found a solid gold ancient statue worth millions he wants it. Beck has to protect Travis who is less than co-operative anyway & fight off Hatcher's men who have orders to kill... Directed by Peter Berg this is also known under the title Welcome to the Jungle (which was it's working title apparently along with Call of the Wild & Helldorado) just about everywhere other than the US this is a decent enough if unspectacular action comedy. I think the makers were trying to make a throwback to the larger than life action comedies of the 80's & early 90's & in particular Midnight Run (1988) as both share the same basic set-up & plot with a typical mismatched pairing of likable heroes up against a bad guy who has a whole army at his disposal, there are the expected fights, the one-liners, a romance subplot, lots of over the top set-pieces including a fall down a cliff that would have broken every bone in your body & a final where the two lone heroes face up to massive overwhelming odds as they are helplessly outnumbered but still come out on top. The story here is weak, it's not even that fun to watch & it feels like exposition & character development was left on the cutting room floor to quicken the pace as we never learn anything about Hatcher, very little about Travis or why he hates his father & a subplot involving some native rebels is over just as soon as it starts & for some reason there are two baffling scenes with Monkeys that I think are meant to be funny or have some relevance but aren't & don't. At just over 100 minutes it moves along at a decent pace & it's watchable but just not brilliant in any regard, the character's are hollow, the action is tame, the plot feels unfinished & there's little here to distinguish The Rundown from any straight to video action flick. My main problem with The Rundown was that the action scenes just aren't that memorable, there are a few cool fights, a shoot-out at the end & a couple of exploding vehicles but nothing else & even the main bad guy gets a lacklustre death. The scenery looks nice I will say that but one tree looks pretty much like any other. There doesn't seem to be too many CGI computer effects here which is good to see & the stunt work is generally good but it did feel very familiar. The IMDb says this had a budget of about $85,000,000 & that amazes me as I can't really see where the money went, sure there one or two decent explosions & some fight scenes but nothing else really stands out. Although set in the Amazon in Brazil this was filmed in Hawaii. The cast are alright, The Rock is OK, Seann William Scott isn't that funny here while Christopher Walken is wasted. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a cameo at the start & Ewan Bremner as the comedy relief Scottish plane pilot is awful. The Rundown is an OK action comedy adventure that has a familiar feel to it & maybe isn't as big as it should have been since the set-piece action scenes really are nothing to get excited about.

There's nothing more to say. There was a better story in the Scorpion King. I thought I'd give this movie a chance; every one I know said it was good. It was like watching the A-Team, lots of gun fire and explosions but no one can hit the good guy walking down the middle of the street, but every one of his shots, usually from the hip, hits a bad guy or two every time, even when they are under cover. I guess Hollywood figures only the good guys know how to aim a gun. I love suspension of disbelief movies but there are limits. This was just 90 minutes of time

Beck is a retrieval expert – who collects debts, possessions and people all for cash. Desperate to leave the business he takes one final job – to find a man called Travis and return him to his father in Los Angeles. The job takes him deep into the Brazilian jungle to find Travis, who is there to find a missing artefact. As a matter of courtesy, Beck pays off the boss of the local mine (and all the jobs in the whole area) to let him take Travis without any trouble. However when Hatcher takes the money and then changes his mind, Beck finds himself on the run deep into the jungle with Travis in tow. Marketed in the UK under the better title 'Welcome To The Jungle', I wasn't interested enough in a silly looking film with only an ex-wrestler and Stiffler in it to attract me to it. Faced with a Saturday night where all I wanted to do was veg and relax, this film stood out on the shelf and I decided to give it a stab. The film opens really well with a good action scene and continues well enough until the plot brings in the rebels and then it goes downhill. From here on it the story makes almost no sense at all and it really sucks a lot of the fun out of the film when it becomes some convoluted Raiders Of The Lost Ark! Despite this weak thread the film remains a bit piece of dumb fun that you'll enjoy as long as you know what to expect. The action is silly 'one man versus an army' fare and the jokes are silly at best but it all works and it mostly works thanks to one main thing – The Rock. I have never seen him in any other film other than a minor role in Mummy 2 but I was very impressed here by his ability as an action man. He has the muscles of Vin Diesel but he has much more personality and humour. I'm not saying he is a great actor but he is a solid action movie star and I would like to see him with better material in a better film. Scott is not annoying here and that's about as much as I can say about him. His is not quite Stiffler but he gets close at times but he does well enough and he suits the tone of the film. Dawson is gorgeous but she is badly used here and I'm sure not even she knows what her character is all about – worth seeing her in anything though. Walken is basically having a laugh but he is enjoyable even here; it's a bit like watching an artist put up do a bit of painting in your front room but he is still good. Bremner is amusing for those of us with Northern Irish/Scottish accents who are used to repeating everything but other than that he is a bit silly (his bagpipe bit at the end is just bad). Overall this is a very average action movie with some silly laughs. If you expect more than a bit of dumb, teenage-boy fun then you'll likely be disappointed; meet it on its own terms and you'll enjoy it even if it takes a dip after the first half. However for me the film is worth seeing because of the solid presence, good physical work, easy delivery and natural charisma of The Rock – and trust me, I'm the last person who I thought would ever admit something like that!

This has gotta be the most overrated action movie I've ever seen. "The Rundown" is basically one of those movie that have all brawn but no brains and Christopher Walken seriously needs to stop trying to play the bad guy because he sucks at it, and he sucked in "A View to a Kill", you can check that movie out yourself, because from then until 2003 he gave the most faceless performance of his career in that and in "The Rundown" he sucked even more and it looks to me that "Balls of Fury" will be even worse. The dialogue and the story was hilariously stupid. Not only was the script really retarded but it was very repetitive, too many lines were being repeated too much, and I HATED that stupid "Option A or Option B" line and the "You Like thunderstorms big boy?" The plot was really gay, these guys were actually trying to copy the Indiana Jones movies with them getting that stupid artifact just made a story that COULD happen into something ridiculous. The only thing that I liked about the movie was the action, it was great there's no denying that, but something I don't get is that throughout the movie he doesn't use guns and all of the sudden uses them toward the end. The idea of a one guy taking out an entire military without using firearms would've been pretty cool, but the moment The Rock picked up the rifle and started shooting totally ruined it. But seriously, what kind of goon would use whips as weapons, talk about being queer....

I was amazed to come on here and find all of these great reviews of this film. What movie are you guys watching? * Atrocious Character Development * This film has some of the weakest character development I have ever seen. Why should I even care about 'The Rock's" character? The only thing they let us know about him is that he likes to cook and wants to open a restaurant, are you joking?! No, before you know it Beck is in the Amazon trying to find another character (Sean William Scott) we are supposed to like but know absolutely nothing about. Why do I even care if beck even saves this guys Life? I won't even go into detail about the Villain (Christopher Walken) or the Rebel leader because they are both treated in this same manner. * Where is the Plot? * So, you are trying to tell me that an evil gold mining lord who speaks no Portuguese has enslaved a whole village of people into mining the gold for him. Ok, but wait then the plot jumps to finding this ancient gold statue (no relation to the evil mining of gold mention before). Then we have this rebel resistance which we know nothing about. Who are these people? We can only assume that these people don't want to mine the gold for Christopher Walken so they live in the jungle. Big deal. * Action Fight Scenes * I would forgive this films Character and Plot flaws if the fight scenes weren't so boring. They are very repetitive and boring. Thunder and lightning, give me a break how many times did we have to hear this? Did he really just throw a record player like a Frisbee? In a town full of guys with AK-47s we a supposed to be afraid of 3 guys with whips!? The whole Beck not using guns issue really got old fast. Was Steven Segal busy? * The Ending * * SPOILERS ALERT * Did Beck even get his money?! Why poison them only for a few hours? This guy could obviously have Beck killed easily. Why even save this kids life? He gave Beck nothing but trouble the whole time. So here we are the movie is over and the viewer is supposed to believe that Beck traded 250,000 dollars and his dream of opening a restaurant for, life on the run from a Loan Shark with an annoying punk 20 something treasure hunter ?!!?!? 3/10 Just for the Cinematography which was beautiful at times. Pass on this one unless you are a WWE fan obsessed with the Rock.

The Rundown or Welcome to The Jungle it's a typical modern adventure/action movie. Entire movie's idea wasn't too bad, though it contains nothing original but its implementation became only a disappointment because the story was poor written and awfully predictable all the way. Acting in the movie was pretty bad even for an action movie and about the directing I can say only the same. On the other hand the movie was well shot with carefully selected good scenery that brought reasonable exotic to the audience. Some jokes were really funny, although entire humor was as usual vulgar and silly Fight scenes look very typical for The Rock and they were quite different during the movie. While some of such action sequences were not bad a all most of them look only ridiculous and unreal. Overall The Rundown is nothing more than a silly action/adventure movie. It has some entertainment value but due to all its flaws and weak parts its worth seeing only for hard action fans or for fans of the Rock 4,7 out of 10. Sorry for my bad English.