Eye Candy #516 - "Faster"

Faster:  Overblown quasi-noir script that just screams to be rewritten by Richard Stark, this is an old-fashioned revenge picture with contemporary trappings (which isn’t surprising, seeing as the two screenwriters also gave us the muddled, crappy quasi-noir “The Salton Sea“; this film is also set in that same dusty, Joshua-tree laden waste of eastern California).  ‘Driver’ (The Rock) gets out of prison after serving 8 years.  Immediately after leaving prison, he picks up his Chevelle SS and begins to hunt down and kill the men responsible for the murder of his brother years earlier after a bank heist gone wrong.    ‘Cop’ (played by Billy Bob Thornton; yes that is his character’s name) is a washed-up cop with substance abuse problems who finds himself on the Driver’s case.  ‘Killer’ (also his character’s name), a millionaire playboy who moonlights as a hitman,  is hired to kill the Driver.  Carla Gugino, Tom Berenger,  Maggie Grace, amongst others, are here in support.    Not close to what has become standard Dwayne Johnson fare - gone are the feel good message and kiddie appeal.   And in their place, we get graphic violence and The Rock barely speaks for the duration of the picture.  You don’t root for him as we know next to nothing about him.  The subtitle of the film should have been, “Unlikable People Doing Bad Things to One Another”.  But unfortunately, just being against his standard type isn’t enough to make this movie any good.   Another dull film from director George Tillman.  Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”.