Cartoonish violence upstages heroic story

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

WALKING TALL (PG-13) Two Stars (Fair)

If you're making a movie about some good old-fashioned vigilante head bashing, it's best if you make it quick. The new "Walking Tall" clocks in at 80 minutes.

Be grateful there's no moralizing or proselytizing about the lead character's vengeful action. The bad guys deserve to be hit upside the head and The Rock obliges. End of story.

There's more welcome news: The Rock is more appealing — and certainly more muscular than Joe Don Baker, the star of the 1973 original "Walking Tall."

Of the various wrestlers and weightlifters turned actors, he seems the brightest, most charismatic and likeable so far. It's pure genius to cast him as an avenging angel in this B-movie remake.

And Rock's character name (Chris Vaughn) rolls more comfortably off the tongue than Baker's Buford Pusser (even if Pusser was the real-life Tennessee sheriff who inspired the story.)

Otherwise, the core of the story remains the same, even though the locale has been shifted from Tennessee to the rustic, pine-scented State of Washington.

Vaughn, a former high school football star and ex-Special Forces soldier, returns to his hometown for the first time in eight years, and discovers it's gone to hell. The town lumber mill has been closed down and a corrupt malaise abounds.

The town is under the thumb of rich playboy Jay Hamilton (Neal McDonough). After inheriting the mill, he promptly closed it and opened a casino, instead. It is there that he and his cohorts deal in cards, pornography and drugs. He owns the cops and has the townspeople cowering in fear.

Being a righteous fellow, Vaughn expresses his indignation and, for his troubles, he's beaten, slashed and left for dead. If that's not enough, his 11-year-old nephew almost dies after a drug encounter. So Vaughn picks up a cedar two-by-four and goes headhunting. Like Baker's Pusser, Vaughn's vigilante behavior is rewarded. He's elected sheriff and soon has the bad guys on the run.

The Rock's performance matches the movie — it's a lean, unadorned performance. Johnny Knoxville as his one loyal old friend provides comic relief. McDonough is a blond-haired, blue-eyed Arian devil as Jay. He's so mean, you'll look around your theater seat for a two-by-four of your own.

Kevin Bray directs in journeyman fashion. Astonishingly, this simplistic exercise is credited to five writers.

If you take an amoral movie like this too seriously, you'll feel guilty for enjoying it. So don't take it seriously.

Rated PG-13, with violence, profanity, drug use, innuendo.