Faster (2010)

I’ll be blunt: Faster is a stupid movie with an equally stupid title. I can imagine some studio marketing lackey refuting the latter half of that statement by claiming the adjective resonates with their target audience of young, male action enthusiasts. Truth is, it’s a word selected seemingly at random from the dialogue of perhaps the most pointless major character ever conceived. It’s as if the title was chosen not by a filmmaker but by a committee.

Faster is the third release from the new theatrical films branch of CBS; their first was the disease-of-the-week snoozer Extraordinary Measures (which even Harrison Ford couldn’t save), and the next was the dubious Jennifer Lopez rom-com The Back-Up Plan. CBS Films is like the pesky little brother of a Hollywood production company, the annoying little twerp who tells the bigger kids, “Oh yeah? Well, I can make an action movie, too! And it’ll have shootouts, and car chases, and slow motion ‘n’ stuff!” That’s about the level of intellectual maturity I perceived within this film.

There are three main characters, all unnamed for the duration. First we meet “DRIVER” as he is billed on screen. He’s played by Dwayne Johnson, who apparently no longer uses his wrestling nickname “The Rock,” presumably to reduce comparisons of his acting skills to stones and other inanimate objects. Driver has just been released after doing a full dime in the pen (and after a phoned-in one-scene appearance by Tom Berenger as the warden), and he’s immediately off on a killing spree, exacting vengeance on the assortment of criminals who did him wrong a decade ago when they (sob) killed his brother (sob) in a robbery setup. Johnson’s character drove the getaway car during that crime, hence his label. Johnson has very little dialogue in this movie, and perhaps that’s for the best, because when he does speak it’s usually to utter some ridiculous Schwarzenegger-wannabe badass line such as when he spits to the warden, “Where’s the exit?”

Our second featured player is the “COP” (Billy Bob Thornton, sleepwalking through a re-tread role). Speaking of cop clichés, let’s count them, shall we? He’s a semi-secret drug addict, unshaven, a terrible dresser even by cop standards, divorced from a shrewish ex, in a guilt-ridden relationship with his emotionally frail son, only a week or so until his retirement, partnered for the time being with a young, by-the-book hotshot (Carla Gugino) and overseen by a crusty but benign sergeant (Xander Berkeley). They even introduce Thornton’s character with an oldie already made iconic in another, better film–another unoriginal choice.

And though some may contend that police incompetence is widespread enough to justify the stereotype, it’s laughably absurd to believe a hulking bald guy with a hand cannon can spend five days walking inside buildings and blowing miscreants away in full view of witnesses, then escape in broad daylight in a tire-screeching, skidmark-laying ’71 Chevelle with a black-and-white rally paint job without, you know, someone in authority nailing him in large communities as Bakersfield, California, or Henderson, Nevada.

That’s because the person who’s supposed to nail him is the third part in our triumvirate of leads, the “KILLER” (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). That pointless major character I mentioned earlier? It’s this guy. He’s a Eurotrash pretty boy (actually described by a crime-scene witness as “beautiful”–did Oliver’s PR man write this?) with a vapid, clingy blonde (Maggie Grace) hanging around his luxuriously modern abode, complete with an armory of automatic weapons. The girl loves to play like she’s Bonnie Parker, but she wants him to give up the killing life for her, and, of course, he has one last job to take care of first.

What is startling to me is that even with all the British-accented yada-yada he has with his unknown boss (and if you don’t see that “surprise” coming, you’ve just been dozing) about how he’s such a talented hit man, he doesn’t do jack. I’m totally spoiling this for anyone intending to watch it, so don’t complain when you see for yourself that this character, for all his screen time, ultimately does not add anything of any significance to the story. And this character, this actor, gets third billing! Oliver Jackson-Cohen? Who is this guy? I suspect someone owed or owes someone else a huge favor because of this role.

Come on, this is Thanksgiving week, a time when Hollywood is supposed to bring out their best of the best, with crowd-pleasers for families and serious award-season fare. And the studios look at their calendars like gameboards, positioning their releases on specific weekends to maximize their audience share and stretch their marketing dollars. Some time ago, some people sat down in a room around their planning calendar and saw that for the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend, the new Disney flick Tangled and the latest Harry Potter installment would draw the kid and family audience, while Burlesque would be a lure for women, girls, and drag queens. They realized the masculine demographic was not covered for that weekend (unless you count holdovers like Unstoppable), so they delivered unto us an action film. But did they give us a best-of-the-best action movie, one worthy of the big day and season? NO. Far from it.

In fact, I found this boneheaded movie insulting to my intelligence and unworthy of its release date. There have been excellent action movies made before, ones that didn’t need to be dumbed down to a marketer’s demographic perceptions. For example, compare it to the now-classic Die Hard, which even takes place on Christmas Eve! If Faster is the best action Hollywood can give us for the holidays, then it’s a bleak sign of the weeks to come.