I’ve had the disc from Netflix for several weeks but over the last couple of nights I finally got around to watching the expected silly summer movie Rampage.Based on the coin operated video game from the 1980’s, a game without any form of narrative, the movie stars Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, and a scene stealing performance by Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Rampage  centers on the relationship between Davis Okoye (Johnson) and the albino gorilla George in his care at the San Diego Wildlife Sanctuary (apparently our zoological society did not participate in the film.)  After George is exposed to evil genetic editing super stuff he grows in size and aggression. Developed by an evil corporation doing evil corporation things for evil military applications, this movie is far from subtle, the contaminate also infects a wolf and an alligator. The Head of the evil corporation, Claire Wyde (Akerman) uses a homing beacon to bring the animal to her facility, located in the Sears Tower in downtown Chicago. (Because bringing enraged, overly aggressive, giant monsters to you is always a good plan.) Okoye is helped by a renegade scientist from the Evil Corporation, Caldwell (Harris) and a government agent Russell (Morgan) as they attempt to stop the rampage and return George to his normal peaceful self. Of course this terminates in a grand Kaiju  battle in downtown Chicago with the monsters destroying building (that got you points in the game) and eating people (which got you even more points.)

Rampage  is the sort of film where it is best to leave one’s higher reasoning faculties in the lobby and is enjoyable based upon the performances and the action. On those criteria the movie works. The giant monsters wrecking havoc in a major metropolitan locale is done quite well, though there are moments when the CGI FX are not quite as good as they could have been. On the subject of performances most are good enough. This is not the sort of material that normally allows an actor to shine but instead usually requires that specialized talent for delivery jargon-filled exposition. Harris performs perfectly well as the ‘good’ scientists and Akerman seems to enjoy chewing scenery as the lead villain of the story. I’ll have to agree with the Youtube movie critic MovieBob that Dwayne Johnson has too much natural charisma to pull off playing someone who hates people. Throughout the movie he is charming, and a delight to watch but the real standout performance is Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Russell. Deploying some sort of Texan/Southern accent Morgan steals every scene. The script requires him to enter as an antagonist and flip to becoming an ally and this role reversal Morgan pulls off without ever feeling like he violated his character. Frankly I could watch an entire movie of Morgan playing this character.

This movie doesn’t carry any deeper message or theme such as in 1954’s Gojira but rather is simply a fun action filled story suitable for when you really do not want to think about anything.