THE REEL: ‘Rampage’ could be the ultimate action buff’s movie

Rampage stayed true to one of the tag lines: big meets bigger. The movie is simply about action sequences trying to outdo each other in terms of explosions, destruction and punches.

The story revolves around Davis Okoye from Black Panther. Davis is a primatologist in a San Diego wildlife preserve and he has befriended George, an albino gorilla that he saved from poachers.

A research space station owned by Energyne, a gene manipulation company, is destroyed when a lab rat mutates and trashes the satellite premises.

Claire Wyden (Malin Åkerman), Energyne’s CEO, orders a crew member to retrieve canisters from the lab that contain the pathogen the rat was exposed to before he morphed.

As the doctor escapes in a pod, she is killed when it disintegrates upon re-entry to earth and the canisters scattered to Wyoming, the Everglades and one lands in George’s enclosure.

So now we have a crocodile, wolf and gorilla growing abnormally big and getting aggressive for no reason; basically a lesson on the effects of steroids.

BRAINS BEHIND RESEARCH

Dr Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris), who is the brains behind the research at Energyne, comes to help Davis and George reverse the effects of the pathogens, but everything is not as it seems.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays the agent from secret government agency Harvey Russell, who comes to clean up the mess that is the freak animals by collecting and getting rid of them.

The usual final show down takes place here: of course buildings will be crashed into, the army will be called in, cars trampled upon, and in the end one will step up and save the day.

Don’t get me wrong. I had an amazing time in terms of the “WHOA! Moments”. The movie is has hilarious one liners and tense moments underlined with the signature Dwayne Johnson smoulder.

The graphics were very impressive, and you could tell these guys were really serious about making their CGI (computer generated imagery) effects as close to reality as possible. And when it came to 3D, it combined well. However, the corniest lines in the history of action movies can be found in this movie.

Given the first half of some statements, I found myself finishing the other half with an astonishing 90-something per cent accuracy.

It comes into perspective when you realise the movie is created off the back of a video game by the same title.

The meticulous action scenes and a plot that isn’t as gripping, with lines that could use much more work, tells you exactly who they were targeting when they made this movie.

Just to show you how much the flaw is, the best screen chemistry is between Ooye and George. In the end you can’t help but root for the gorilla more than the other characters.

You can go watch it with you brother, friends, girlfriends (if you are into ammunition rolls and things going boom kind of movies) but beware that this is a PG-16 movie for language especially.