Walking Tall [2004]
Director: Kevin Bray
Actor: The Rock, Johnny Knoxville
This is a story inspired by the exploits of Sherrif Bufford Pusser who was the inspiration for the 70s show, also called Walking Tall.
Rock, an ex-special forces seargent, comes back from service to the town where he grew up, and finds that the mill that used to bring most of the money, work and trade into town has been closed town by his old high-school friend Hamilton and that Hamilton now runs a casino. He hooks up with all of his old friends for a “friendly” game of football and afterwards accepts an invitation by Hamilton – who now owns the current largest supplier of work and trade, a casino – to come and enjoy himself with his friends at his new establishment. While there he is confronted with what he’s suspected all along; that home is no longer the home he knew, and that the town is rotten to the core, with drug use and corruption running rampant. When he discovers one of his friends is getting cheated out of his money by one of the croupiers at the craps table he gets into a fight with the casino’s security guards who not only decide to “teach him a lesson” but also, upon finding out he’s former special forces, decide to give him “special treatment,” by carving him up. They leave him for dead. The Rock wouldn’t be the Rock if he didn’t survive beyond all expectations and he comes to a relatively full recovery.
When his nephew OD’s on crystal meth, sold to him and his friends by some of the casino security guards he decides to take a two-by-four and pay a visit to the casino. There he beats the snot out of all the casino security personel, leaving them as broken and battered as some of the slot machines he decides to tear up on his way out. He gets arrested and tried in court. When given the chance to explain himself, and show the scars running all up and down his torso, curtesy of the “special treatment” he got, he is acquitted and cleared of all charges. He decides to run for the office of sherrif, seeing as how the old sherrif is on Hamilton’s payroll. Public support is big and he gets elected and promptly makes his best friend, an ex-rock-star-wannabe-recovering-addict played by Johnny Knoxville of Jackass fame, a deputy. Together the two of them decide to clean up the town.
I thought this was a good, though simple film. There were a couple of things that pleasantly surprised me. For instance, the camera work, though overal nothing special, really managed to deliver some relatively unique shots. One of them worth mentioning is when Rock falls out of a first floor window. Another thing that I thought was cool is the fact that the Rock isn’t made to be entirely super-human, which was nice. And then there was the world’s inept shoot-out between a wounded Johnny Knoxville and one of the casino’s thugs. Hilarious!
