Rampage

A mere fortnight after Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle left British cinemas, here comes Dwayne Johnson again with a similarly hushed and introspective tale about the love between a man and his giant albino gorilla. Rampage is based on a cult video game from the Eighties in which three enormous beasts lay waste to a pixellated cityscape, but it has clearly been devised as a bespoke Johnson project, playing to the former wrestler’s obvious action-star strengths while shearing off anything that might slow down the ride.

And it is exactly how these big, thick destruction films should be done: the script is boisterously funny, the action sequences have real flair and sweep, and the central human-primate friendship is even quite moving at points. You might be wondering how it could be possible for anyone to convincingly express tenderness on screen towards an outsized, rippling beast with a gimlet glare and arms that could rip the turret off a Panzer tank, but somehow the gorilla manages it.

His name is George – Furious, rather than Curious, for the most part – though when the film begins, he is happily ensconced in a wildlife sanctuary in San Diego, joshing via sign language with his best bud Davis Okoye (Johnson), the primatologist who saved him as an infant from Rwandan poachers. But trouble drops by in the form of a canister of experimental nerve agent called CRISPR, which falls into his enclosure from an exploding space station, and sends George’s growth rate and temper into overdrive.

The same accident plays out twice more elsewhere in America, on the plains of Wyoming and in the Florida Everglades: anyone who has played the game or seen the trailer will already know the results, but the film has so much fun unveiling them it would be a pity to give them away in print. Soon enough, there are three berserk monsters converging on downtown Chicago, and only one man with the zoological nous and muscle mass to stop them.

In a very real sense this is all there is to Brad Peyton’s film, which keeps playing its two winning cards over and over again, and is smart enough to realise they are more than enough. The first is the giant animal carnage itself, which crackles with fun ideas and flourishes throughout. The second is the comic chemistry of a superbly picked cast who bring everyone in on the joke.

Rampage

A mere fortnight after Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle left British cinemas, here comes Dwayne Johnson again with a similarly hushed and introspective tale about the love between a man and his giant albino gorilla. Rampage is based on a cult video game from the Eighties in which three enormous beasts lay waste to a pixellated cityscape, but it has clearly been devised as a bespoke Johnson project, playing to the former wrestlers obvious action-star strengths while shearing off anything that might slow down the ride. And it is exactly how these big, thick destruction films should be done: the script is boisterously funny, the action sequences have real flair and sweep, and the central human-primate friendship is even quite moving at points. You might be wondering how it could be possible for anyone to convincingly express tenderness on screen towards an outsized, rippling beast with a gimlet glare and arms that could rip the turret off a Panzer tank, but somehow the gorilla manages it. His name is George Furious, rather than Curious, for the most part though when the film begins, he is happily ensconced in a wildlife sanctuary in San Diego, joshing via sign language with his best bud Davis Okoye (Johnson), the primatologist who saved him as an infant from Rwandan poachers. But trouble drops by in the form of a canister of experimental nerve agent called CRISPR, which falls into his enclosure from an exploding space station, and sends Georges growth rate and temper into overdrive. The same accident plays out twice more elsewhere in America, on the plains of Wyoming and in the Florida Everglades: anyone who has played the game or seen the trailer will already know the results, but the film has so much fun unveiling them it would be a pity to give them away in print. Soon enough, there are three berserk monsters converging on downtown Chicago, and only one man with the zoological nous and muscle mass to stop them. In a very real sense this is all there is to Brad Peytons film, which keeps playing its two winning cards over and over again, and is smart enough to realise they are more than enough. The first is the giant animal carnage itself, which crackles with fun ideas and flourishes throughout. The second is the comic chemistry of a superbly picked cast who bring everyone in on the joke.