Originally published 4/18/04
Walking Tall
Director: Kevin Bray
Producers: Ashok Armritraj, Jim Burke, Lucas Foster, David Hoberman, Paul Schiff
Writers: David Klass and Channing Gibson and David Levien & Brian Koppelman, based on the screenplay by Mort Briskin
Starring: The Rock, Johnny Knoxville, Neal McDonough, Ashley Scott
How can I help but smile this scene: The Rock opens his shirt to expose his rippling torso to a courtroom; the crowd gasps, and the judge sternly admonishes “I want the jury to disregard what they’ve just seen!”
Well, I think in my sassiest voice, how could they?
With Walking Tall (a re-make of the 1973 movie “inspired by” events in the life of pro-wrestler-turned-take-no-guff-lawman Sheriff Buford Pusser), we’re firmly, proudly, in B-movie country. This is a movie that lists its stunt performers with the same space and typeface size as the actors.
On second thought, that generosity could simply be a clever way to pad the credits, since by the time they’re rolling up the screen barely 80 minutes have passed.
I don’t mind this, I think more movies could stand to be 80 minutes long. There are too many B-Movies trying to pass as A-Movies these days (that’s right, Bruckheimer, I said it).
Perhaps the more times get complicated and confusing, and the more helpless we feel about events spiraling out of control, the more we desire to be handed a simple conflict – something bad that needs to be hit with a big stick. We’ve been solving problems like that since before we could speak, according to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Rock, who in his career in the WWE has hit people with folding chairs, tables, and countless other blunt objects, is well-prepared for this role. He’s at ease on screen; even, I’d venture to say, charismatic. In one brief moment he’s able to get a laugh just from a subtle look he throws to his mother (Barbara Tarbuck). It’s a moment so quick you almost forget to notice hey, this guy’s acting up there.
He’s playing Chris Vaughn, an 8-year Special Forces Veteran who has returned from his overseas adventures to spend some downtime in his woody Washington State hometown (a locale change probably prompted by them filming the thing in Canada). But from the moment he steps off the ferry, he starts seeing not-so-subtle signs that things have gone bad: pawn shops and sex emporiums have sprung up, people are buying drugs – they’re even leaving their babies in strollers on the sidewalk while they buy said drugs.
This is the sort of depravity we are always being told is the result of not teaching the Ten Commandments in school. In this case, though, the reason is less complicated – the town’s clobber-worthy local greedy evil-doer Jay Hamilton, Jr. (Boomtown’s Neal McDonough) shut down the timber mill he inherited from his parents and opened a casino. This despite that there are still zillions of trees around, and with less jobs, there’s less money to gamble with.
But Hamilton isn’t just about the money – like a villain from that old cartoon Captain Planet and the Planeteers, he gets off on ruining things just for the sake of ruining them. Why, when the odds of casino games are calibrated specifically so that the House steadily, inevitably wins, do you have the dealers cheat anyway?
And why, on top of draining everyone’s money and vitality, and cheating at it, would Hamilton open a meth lab and hock drugs to children? Instead of exploring the devastating effects of unemployment, gambling addiction, drug abuse, etc. in a decaying small town, we get one bad, bad man (did I mention he uses dirty tactics in a pickup game of football?) just begging to be whacked with a big stick. All that is missing is a scene of him evicting an old woman at Christmas and kicking a puppy.
Eventually Vaughn loses patience with Hamilton’s sliminess and the rubberstamp local police and, with an impassioned speech while on trial for busting up the casino, he performs the afore-mentioned flashing (ostensibly to show off the scars inflicted on him by Hamilton’s goons) and announces his candidacy for Sheriff. From the speed with which he’s acquitted and elected, we can tell no one was able to disregard what they just saw.
As Sheriff, he fires all his deputies and hires his friend Ray (Jackass’s Johnny Knoxville, acquitting himself better than I would have predicted), whose qualifications are that he watches COPS and was a drug addict, which somehow gives him textbook knowledge about how drug rings operate. Much like any wino could teach you how to ferment grapes.
The gun rack in Sheriff Vaughn’s almost-too-manly-to-be-true pickup truck holds his signature weapon, a hefty club made out of a chunk of cedar. We don’t get too long to see him wielding it, but then again, we don’t get long to see much of anything in this movie.
That includes Deni (Ashley Scott), who Vaughn finds working as a stripper at the casino, and must bed her down so quickly for the sake of forward momentum that we never get much chance to find out what she did before she was forced to take the demeaning job. Or what the nature of their prior relationship was. Or for that matter, her last name.
But under the energetic direction of Kevin Bray, it becomes almost refreshing to see the way the movie skips like a stone across the heavy details. I especially like the sound work in the action sequences, it’s expected to have innumerable things going WHUMP, CRACK!, and AARGH!, but there’s genuine zeal in it here.
B-Movies are for people who know the drill and are there because they like the drill. Walking Tall riffs with more polish on charts previously covered by Schwarzenegger in the mid-80’s (it has better acting and continuity than Commando, and more style than Raw Deal.) It knows it is to provide a sneering bad guy, some laughs, a little bit of T&A (PG-13-ready, of course), and a big guy hitting things with a big stick.
And for all its ludicrous contrivances, and the way it gives a cheerful thumbs-up to inarticulate violent rages – this movie provides the drill. Entertainingly, unpretentiously, and (it’s worth saying again) briefly.