Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomi Harris, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Malin Ackerman, Jake Lacy, Joe Manganiello, Marley Shelton, P.J. Byrne, Demetrius Grosse, Jack Quaid, Breanne Hill, Matt Gerald, Will Yun Lee, Bruce Blackshear, Jason Liles.
The arcade game to which this film takes its name and part of its premise, has all but been lost to the depths of time, a classic of the back street shops that held deep fascination for those who were brought up in an era when gaming was social, your attention divided between the now retro classic, the music and infectious beat and doing your best in front of a crowded room and the urging of friends behind your shoulder to beat the score set by local and undefeated champion of the local arcade.
A classic of its day, and now, seemingly ridiculously, Rampage is a film to which actually holds its head up with certain pride, one that manages to bring the thrill of the game of knocking down buildings in a downtown suburb to life but with a moral message on how we are treating the planet and its animal population to our own whims and the pursuit of wealth.
The unexpected joy in watching Rampage, a good old fashioned destruction film given 21st Century familiar sub-text, is not to be dismissed, is to be revelled in for the memories of Saturday afternoons spent in the arcades, for the sheer audacity and style in which everybody involved with the film to come together and make it a feast for the genre to chew on.
The film will not be considered a classic, not by any stretch of the imagination but it is one in which to enjoy, to remember in which the good old fashioned monster movies have grown, have been given a new force of life thanks to modern techniques in film making; like the recently updated Godzilla and King Kong films show, there is mileage in giving people a fright when it is at the contempt of man’s arrogance over nature.
With Dwayne Johnson, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Malin Ackerman giving tremendous performances, Rampage is a film not to miss, feel the warmth in going wild and embrace the animal within, this is one film based on an arcade film that does not fail to run amok in the imagination.
Ian D. Hall