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There’s a scene in George Tillman Jr’s Faster which says everything you need to know about the movie. Actually, it’s just a shot. Maybe two seconds in length, too. The camera is positioned behind the glass of the MPH odometer and Dwayne Johnson, working every bit of the Schwarzenegger vibe, slams on the gas. You see the needle climb. And – BOOM – on to a shot of the classic car tearing away. The moment of artful positioning is over. Faster is every bit of a wake up call for theatres this November. It’s sickly orchestrated, alarmingly thorough, and its rapid fire camera shots are breathtakingly realized. Indeed, Faster is – in every way – a throwback to the classic cool of 70’s exploitation films.
Johnson plays The Driver. Fresh off a 10-year stint of steady jail time, he’s ready – no, he’s pacing – to enact his revenge on the crooked folks that killed his bank-robbing brother (Matt Gerald) and set him up to take the fall. They all think he’s dead. He’s not. He’s just really pissed and really ripped and really quiet. He’s got little help on the outside with his revenge plans, but he does have a few connections. Of course, they give him a and with The Cop (Billy Bob Thorton) and The Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) right on his ass, well, The Driver is going to have to kill everybody on his list a whole lot … faster.
Sure, the script – penned by Tony and Joe Gayton – does some silly things every once in awhile, but just as Faster’s plot starts to stumble into familiar territory the direction by Tillman and the film’s director of photography swoops in and compensates for the plotting weaknesses with some smart visuals. The funny thing about Faster is that the script – as if one-upping the intelligence of its visual-orientated director – starts to grow some balls of its own and does some fascinating things thematically. Expanding the roles of characters (especially with Thorton's role), we get storylines from The Driver, The Cop, and The Killer that we wouldn’t normally expect from this sort of vehicle; intriguing ones that lead to a surprise twist from the narrative.
Johnson is every bit the Hollywood Action Star - even if Disney has neutered him with a whole bunch of silliness in the last couple of years. Faster, without even a pause in its action, returns him to the genre he is best at. Johnson is a man possessed. He seems driven by some bull-like beast loosed from the fiery pits of Hell to kill, kill, and kill some more. He’s brutal and has a face void of expression; void of charisma; void of anything but vengeance. By the end of the movie; however, there is a bit of general sympathy extracted from his features and, in a key scene with Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, his true face is revealed. Slightly. Then, it is back to the killing.
If the movie sounds hollow, know that, surprisingly, it isn’t entirely, but it is largely a whole lot of popcorn fun. While keeping its B-movie intentions intact, Faster delivers a high-octane thrill-ride that – while uneven at times – certainly has a whole bunch of buttery flavors flowing within. It’s fun and surprisingly serious for a bit. Even if it contains a message about how violence affects a man’s spirit, we still get a few fun-lovin’ kernels stuck between our teeth along the way.
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, some drug use and language.
