Brutal Faster a Slow Ride to Nowhere
Driver (Dwayne Johnson) has spent the last ten years in prison preparing for his release. He literally sprints to his first destination, a rickety old junkyard hiding a supped-up muscle car, his trusty leather jacket, a file on a certain very important person and a handgun. He immediately goes to that individual’s place of business, walks past the front desk, past all the cubicles, finds who he is looking for and promptly shoots him right in the head.
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is cooking up bullets in Faster © CBS Films
This is just the beginning. Driver is on a quest to avenge his older brother’s death, a death he feels responsible for. He’s got four other people to find, four other people he is going to kill, and although he knows the consequences for his actions are going to be dire he’ll worry about that later after the his bloody need for vengeance has been satiated.
Movies do not get any simpler or more straightforward than Faster. Man gets out of jail. Man gets into car. Man hunts down all of those he feels are responsible for the death of his brother. That’s it. That’s the storyline. Think Point Blank in the direct single-mindedness of the lead. Think Mad Max in regards to his ability behind the wheel.
If only director George Tillman Jr. (Notorious, Soul Food) and writers Tony (Uncommon Valor) and Jay Gayton (Murder by Numbers) had left things there. Instead, they add a pair of mismatched cops played by Carla Gugino and Billy Bob Thornton working from opposite ends to solve the case as well as a conflicted hitman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) who gets involved in stopping Driver’s quest. Both of these subplots serve little to know purpose other than to introduce red herrings we know with almost absolute certainty aren’t going to go anywhere. In fact, all they do is slow the film down, both tangents helping lead the film towards a pompous and overly melodramatic climax that’s so incredibly silly it’s unintentionally hysterical.
Jackson-Cohen’s storyline is the easily the most insipid. Our hitman, stuck by the filmmakers with the not very inspired moniker of “Killer,” is a lost soul constantly searching out new challenges. As a child we discover through visual hints that he had some sort of disability in regards to his legs. He’s overcome this, seeking out adrenaline any and everyway he can, ultimately transforming himself into one of the world’s elite assassins.
By the team we meet him he’s become bored with this life, the hint of danger associated with it long gone. Now he’s pondering the ultimate adventure, entering into marriage with his longtime girlfriend (played by “Lost” star Maggie Grace) and starting a family of his own. But his encounter with Driver has changed something inside of him and he feels compelled to finish the job, this single-minded man of action challenging the usually cool and collected Killer in a way he finds oddly exhilarating.
All of this would be fine if it were fleshed out and given its own film. Instead, the Gaytons have for whatever reason decided to insert into their script here, adding a pointless layer to things that is unnecessary. Grace flutters her eyelashes, Jackson-Cohen stares wistfully at nothing, and by the time all is said and done I started to wish Driver would add the both of them to his maniacal to-do list. All this subplot does is add minutes to the running time, minutes I slowly came to realize I’d never get back.
As for Cugino and Thornton, their tangent makes a bit more sense and serves a greater purpose even thought the surprises built into it are relatively unsurprising. Billy Bob is a recovering addict with ten days to retirement who feels the need to solve one last case before he tries to repair things with his ex-wife (Moon Bloodgood). Cugino is the veteran detective who doesn’t want to be saddled with the one-time cowboy who’s trying to resurrect a lost career, sure that sooner or later he’ll find a way to doom their case.
The odd part here is that if not for all this filler Tillman would have come very close to crafting a blood-curdling vengeance noir Chan-wook Park, John Boorman or Robert Siodmak would have been proud of. The central narrative is a mixture of Richard Stark and Norman Mailer, the gritty nastiness of it all gleefully digging under a viewer’s skin whether they want it to or not.
For my part I’m all for this sort of thing. Johnson’s single-minded killing spree is nasty and brutal, sure, but it also works ferociously well. The first few confrontations are pointed and spiteful, Tillman and company never shying from the more atrocious nature of their antihero’s actions even if they go out of their way to let us know they’re more or less justified.
But after a while all of this just gets old, and it doesn’t matter if the director stages a crackerjack moonlight car chase or if a bathroom brawl has all the ferocity of a UFC title bout. There’s too much going on and, worse, all of it is treated with such overblown solemnity by the time the forgone conclusion is reached I felt like I’d been both pummeled and preached at for a good deal longer than I enjoyed. Faster starts quick, packing a mean punch when it bolts out of the gate, but quickly grows tiresome as the mileage begins to accrue. When it was over I’d almost forgotten what I’d liked about it in the first place, my initial goodwill shot dead by a script that refused to know when enough was enough.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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