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Rundown, The (HD DVD)
Universal // PG-13 // June 13, 2006 // Region 0
List Price: $34.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Rock was being touted 
a few years back as the next big action hero -- the Arnie or Sly Stallone for th' two thousand aughts -- and every time I'd hear someone spout off that soundbite, my reaction was always the same: "why?" Sure, The Rock has the imposing physique for it, and yeah, he has a huge following from his wrestling days, but based on Doom, The Mummy Returns, and what little I'd seen of The Scorpion King, I just couldn't fathom millions upon millions of people forking over eight bucks a pop every summer to see him. ...but I just finished watching The Rundown, and now I get it.
The Rock stars as Beck, a prospective restaurateur who's been tackling collection work for the mob. The big boss keeps nickle-and-diming Beck out of his proper fees to keep his best retrieval expert under his thumb, but he grudgingly agrees to give Beck the cash he needs to open his modest little bistro in exchange for...yup, one last job. His son Travis (Seann William Scott) ruffled some feathers in Chicago, and although the big man has thrown around enough money to help smoothen things out, he needs the kid in town to dot the Is and make everything copacetic. It'd be a pretty short movie if Travis came willingly, so Beck's on the next flight to El Dorado to bring him back.
Travis is a fast talking weasel pulling a Producers-style scam in Brazil, having promised a couple thousand percentage points of whatever treasure he finds to just about everyone in the remote gold mining community. Kindhearted but sassy local bartender-with-a-secret Mariana (Rosario Dawson) and dehumanizing, slave-driving tyrant
Hatcher (Christopher Walken) only take him half-seriously, and when Beck rolls into town to take Travis back home, neither of them seem particularly bothered to see him go. That is, until Hatcher starts to take Travis' tales of uncovering the location of a long-lost golden idol seriously. Then, y'know...conflicting interests and a couple of high-octane action sequences quickly follow. Beck winds up lost in the heart of the jungle with Travis, and while he's trying to keep his payday from making a run for it, they're both pursued relentlessly by Hatcher and his gun-toting thugs.
The laundry list of things The Rundown has going for it starts with the setting. So many action-comedies rocking the whole straight-man/wiseassed-reluctant-sidekick dynamic are cop flicks set in some sprawling metropolitan city. Even though the film wasn't actually shot in Brazil, the lush jungle setting is absolutely gorgeous and opens itself up to some action sequences unique enough not to feel like a movie I've watched a couple dozen times already. The Rundown is also imaginative enough to push gunplay aside, for the most part. I mean, I've seen a couple hundred movies with some stock hero ducking for cover and feverishly trying to reload a pistol amidst sprays of gunfire. I'd much rather watch a small army of tiny Brazilian rebels careening around the jungle on ropes and pummeling a hulking behemoth three times their size instead.
The Rock sold me on his potential as a big-budget action hero; he's an extremely charismatic guy, his character is at least a little meatier than just a one-liner-spouting amalgam
of muscles and sinew, and I'd argue that as an actor, The Rock has more chops than Schwarzenegger did at this same stage in his career. Plus he speaks intelligibly, which is one-up on Arnie. Rosario Dawson is as instantly likeable as ever, and the movie doesn't make the mistake of relegating her to a thankless damsel-in-distress role. Christopher Walken's expectedly Christopher Walken-y, and this role had to have been written expressly for him. The only weak link, really, is Seann William Scott, who's a little too strong a match for his annoying-by-design character, and the movie plays much better whenever he's not the central focus. Even though the core of the plot isn't exactly groundbreaking, The Rundown does a commendable job of subverting the audience's expectations, and it doesn't shoehorn in a love story just 'cause there's a pretty girl in the cast.
Too many action-comedies these days are empty and soulless...big-budget vehicles marching in lockstep with stale formulas, each trying to one-up the next with elaborate stuntwork and tens of millions of dollars in visual effects. Truffaut it's not, but The Rundown is propelled by an infectious amount of energy and enthusiasm, Peter Berg's direction is far more confident and sure-handed than I would've expected for a sophomore feature film effort (a couple of obnoxious stylistic choices aside), and...y'know, funny, thrilling, very well cast...all that good stuff. I'm surprised The Rundown didn't do better at the box office, but there isn't a more entertaining lighthearted action flick on HD DVD at the moment, and early adopters eager for some popcorn excitement should put this disc on their short list.
Video: The 2.40:1 high definition image is among the top few HD DVDs I'd whip out as demo material. This may not be obvious as the movie opens; in some early scenes, the colors are so hyperexaggerated that detail seems to take a slight hit, but such qualms faded away as the movie progresses. The palette remains
pumped up throughout, but the level of fine detail is practically unparalleled. Director Peter Berg has a tendency to start shots fairly tight and then fling the camera back a quarter-mile, and even tiny details such as a miner in the far, far distance are still razor-sharp and clearly discernable. The amount of foliage, the craggy Hawaiian terrain, and even the texture of Christopher Walken's aged face offer a sort of definition I would never expect to see from a traditional DVD.
Audio: The Rundown offers both Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 tracks and optional subtitles in English, French, and Spanish. It too hovers right around perfection, serving up aggressive surround usage, a strong sense of directionality, and inhumanly low bass. The only reason there's that missing sliver of a half-star in the sidebar is that dialogue did get overwhelmed at times by all of the action, but at least for this kind of movie, that's a fairly minor concern.
Supplements: The standard definition extras from the 2004 DVD have been carried over to this disc,
beginning with a pair of audio commentaries. The first track with The Rock and director Peter Berg is kinda laid-back and quippy, not much for long, drawn-out stories so much as pondering how to best fight Tom Arnold, what the Rock's hair would look like if he let it grow out for ten years, whether or not cows can get anxious, and how scorchingly hot Rosario Dawson is. The other commentary with Marc Abraham and Kevin Misher is taken more seriously and has surprisingly little overlap. They give more of an impression how seat-of-their-pants-ish the production was than the previous track, discuss the Speedo-clad robbery that prompted them to avoid shooting on location in Brazil, and have some fairly thoughtful discussion about the restrictions of shooting a PG-13 action flick, the ethical concerns of people posting online reviews based on test screenings, and how acting in a movie like this is much more difficult than many people assume.
There are around forty minutes of featurettes, including a standard issue ten minute EPK, Hawaii doubling for Brazil in the movie, the set design of the ramshackle mining town of El Dorado, some of the first-rate stuntwork, the cast-'n-crew fawning over Christopher Walken, and a jokey tabloid-style piece about the actors and baboons monkeying around (ho ho!). Perfectly fine, but aside from that last one, pretty standard stuff. Likewise for the fourteen minutes of deleted scenes, which are predominately unnecessary extensions but also include a very similar but much clunkier alternate ending.
The overall presentation of the disc is similar to Universal's other releases, including 28 chapter stops, the same generic menus, and the traditional crimson HD DVD case.
Conclusion: Okay, The Rundown isn't stunningly original, and swapping out The Rock or the Brazilian setting probably would've caused it to fizzle flat. The success of this action-comedy is completely dependent on the fact that it's this movie with these actors and this director and this setting, but at least for my money, that combination works pretty damn well. Recommended.
Standard image disclaimer: the pictures scattered around this review were lifted from the official movie site and don't necessarily reflect the appearance of this HD DVD. They're just to make the review look pretty 'cause plain-text reviews are no fun for anyone.
a few years back as the next big action hero -- the Arnie or Sly Stallone for th' two thousand aughts -- and every time I'd hear someone spout off that soundbite, my reaction was always the same: "why?" Sure, The Rock has the imposing physique for it, and yeah, he has a huge following from his wrestling days, but based on Doom, The Mummy Returns, and what little I'd seen of The Scorpion King, I just couldn't fathom millions upon millions of people forking over eight bucks a pop every summer to see him. ...but I just finished watching The Rundown, and now I get it. The Rock stars as Beck, a prospective restaurateur who's been tackling collection work for the mob. The big boss keeps nickle-and-diming Beck out of his proper fees to keep his best retrieval expert under his thumb, but he grudgingly agrees to give Beck the cash he needs to open his modest little bistro in exchange for...yup, one last job. His son Travis (Seann William Scott) ruffled some feathers in Chicago, and although the big man has thrown around enough money to help smoothen things out, he needs the kid in town to dot the Is and make everything copacetic. It'd be a pretty short movie if Travis came willingly, so Beck's on the next flight to El Dorado to bring him back.
Travis is a fast talking weasel pulling a Producers-style scam in Brazil, having promised a couple thousand percentage points of whatever treasure he finds to just about everyone in the remote gold mining community. Kindhearted but sassy local bartender-with-a-secret Mariana (Rosario Dawson) and dehumanizing, slave-driving tyrant
Hatcher (Christopher Walken) only take him half-seriously, and when Beck rolls into town to take Travis back home, neither of them seem particularly bothered to see him go. That is, until Hatcher starts to take Travis' tales of uncovering the location of a long-lost golden idol seriously. Then, y'know...conflicting interests and a couple of high-octane action sequences quickly follow. Beck winds up lost in the heart of the jungle with Travis, and while he's trying to keep his payday from making a run for it, they're both pursued relentlessly by Hatcher and his gun-toting thugs. The laundry list of things The Rundown has going for it starts with the setting. So many action-comedies rocking the whole straight-man/wiseassed-reluctant-sidekick dynamic are cop flicks set in some sprawling metropolitan city. Even though the film wasn't actually shot in Brazil, the lush jungle setting is absolutely gorgeous and opens itself up to some action sequences unique enough not to feel like a movie I've watched a couple dozen times already. The Rundown is also imaginative enough to push gunplay aside, for the most part. I mean, I've seen a couple hundred movies with some stock hero ducking for cover and feverishly trying to reload a pistol amidst sprays of gunfire. I'd much rather watch a small army of tiny Brazilian rebels careening around the jungle on ropes and pummeling a hulking behemoth three times their size instead.
The Rock sold me on his potential as a big-budget action hero; he's an extremely charismatic guy, his character is at least a little meatier than just a one-liner-spouting amalgam
of muscles and sinew, and I'd argue that as an actor, The Rock has more chops than Schwarzenegger did at this same stage in his career. Plus he speaks intelligibly, which is one-up on Arnie. Rosario Dawson is as instantly likeable as ever, and the movie doesn't make the mistake of relegating her to a thankless damsel-in-distress role. Christopher Walken's expectedly Christopher Walken-y, and this role had to have been written expressly for him. The only weak link, really, is Seann William Scott, who's a little too strong a match for his annoying-by-design character, and the movie plays much better whenever he's not the central focus. Even though the core of the plot isn't exactly groundbreaking, The Rundown does a commendable job of subverting the audience's expectations, and it doesn't shoehorn in a love story just 'cause there's a pretty girl in the cast. Too many action-comedies these days are empty and soulless...big-budget vehicles marching in lockstep with stale formulas, each trying to one-up the next with elaborate stuntwork and tens of millions of dollars in visual effects. Truffaut it's not, but The Rundown is propelled by an infectious amount of energy and enthusiasm, Peter Berg's direction is far more confident and sure-handed than I would've expected for a sophomore feature film effort (a couple of obnoxious stylistic choices aside), and...y'know, funny, thrilling, very well cast...all that good stuff. I'm surprised The Rundown didn't do better at the box office, but there isn't a more entertaining lighthearted action flick on HD DVD at the moment, and early adopters eager for some popcorn excitement should put this disc on their short list.
Video: The 2.40:1 high definition image is among the top few HD DVDs I'd whip out as demo material. This may not be obvious as the movie opens; in some early scenes, the colors are so hyperexaggerated that detail seems to take a slight hit, but such qualms faded away as the movie progresses. The palette remains
pumped up throughout, but the level of fine detail is practically unparalleled. Director Peter Berg has a tendency to start shots fairly tight and then fling the camera back a quarter-mile, and even tiny details such as a miner in the far, far distance are still razor-sharp and clearly discernable. The amount of foliage, the craggy Hawaiian terrain, and even the texture of Christopher Walken's aged face offer a sort of definition I would never expect to see from a traditional DVD. Audio: The Rundown offers both Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 tracks and optional subtitles in English, French, and Spanish. It too hovers right around perfection, serving up aggressive surround usage, a strong sense of directionality, and inhumanly low bass. The only reason there's that missing sliver of a half-star in the sidebar is that dialogue did get overwhelmed at times by all of the action, but at least for this kind of movie, that's a fairly minor concern.
Supplements: The standard definition extras from the 2004 DVD have been carried over to this disc,
beginning with a pair of audio commentaries. The first track with The Rock and director Peter Berg is kinda laid-back and quippy, not much for long, drawn-out stories so much as pondering how to best fight Tom Arnold, what the Rock's hair would look like if he let it grow out for ten years, whether or not cows can get anxious, and how scorchingly hot Rosario Dawson is. The other commentary with Marc Abraham and Kevin Misher is taken more seriously and has surprisingly little overlap. They give more of an impression how seat-of-their-pants-ish the production was than the previous track, discuss the Speedo-clad robbery that prompted them to avoid shooting on location in Brazil, and have some fairly thoughtful discussion about the restrictions of shooting a PG-13 action flick, the ethical concerns of people posting online reviews based on test screenings, and how acting in a movie like this is much more difficult than many people assume. There are around forty minutes of featurettes, including a standard issue ten minute EPK, Hawaii doubling for Brazil in the movie, the set design of the ramshackle mining town of El Dorado, some of the first-rate stuntwork, the cast-'n-crew fawning over Christopher Walken, and a jokey tabloid-style piece about the actors and baboons monkeying around (ho ho!). Perfectly fine, but aside from that last one, pretty standard stuff. Likewise for the fourteen minutes of deleted scenes, which are predominately unnecessary extensions but also include a very similar but much clunkier alternate ending.
The overall presentation of the disc is similar to Universal's other releases, including 28 chapter stops, the same generic menus, and the traditional crimson HD DVD case.
Conclusion: Okay, The Rundown isn't stunningly original, and swapping out The Rock or the Brazilian setting probably would've caused it to fizzle flat. The success of this action-comedy is completely dependent on the fact that it's this movie with these actors and this director and this setting, but at least for my money, that combination works pretty damn well. Recommended.
Standard image disclaimer: the pictures scattered around this review were lifted from the official movie site and don't necessarily reflect the appearance of this HD DVD. They're just to make the review look pretty 'cause plain-text reviews are no fun for anyone.
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