Film Review: Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton Are Redemptive in ‘Faster’

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CHICAGO – The Action Film is getting a bit creaky, relying more on computer generated eye candy than character or plot. It is refreshing to experience a film like “Faster,” featuring Dwayne Johnson and Billy Bob Thornton, because it is an action film that means something, and puts its inhabitants on a path to their own salvation.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Dwayne Johnson is Driver, a mysterious hulk of a man who is introduced on his last day of a prison sentence. He has served 10 years for a crime he did commit, and throughout that sentence remained an independent operator, shunned by all in the lock-up hellhole. He is bent on revenge upon the persons who have put him there, and killed his brother. Someone has left a Detroit muscle car for him to use (naturally) with plenty of weaponry firepower therein.

The Driver has had a Bakersfield, California, private investigator (Mike Epps) track down where all of his prey lives. He takes the list and kills the first perpetrator. This begins a couple of main cat and mouse chases. The local police get involved, including detectives Cicero (Carla Gugino) and Cop (Billy Boy Thornton). The Cop is going through a bad stretch, estranged from his wife and kid, feeding a bad drug habit and trying to make it ten days until retirement (ha!).

The other pursuer is Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a creatively original action character who is a software millionaire that can’t jack up his life large enough, so he becomes a killer for hire. He is assigned to dispatch Driver, and has the fast foreign cars, superior weaponry and curvaceous associate to inspire him.

Can Driver get his revenge before the law and the lawless catch up to him? Given that he is virtually unstoppable (natch) and he has the power of retribution on his side, don’t count him out. It may take another power to defuse this explosive situation, and it needs to get here faster.

Continue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full review of “Faster”

The Killers: Dwayne Johnson as Driver and Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Killer in ‘Faster’ Photo credit: © CBS Films

Continue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full review of “Faster”