To be perfectly honest with you, it baffles me – BAFFLES ME – that someone in Hollywood didn’t have the genius idea of doing this much, much sooner.
Sure, it’s all well and good to put Dwayne Johnson on screen and let him use his considerable frame to throw some bombs around abjectly at bad guys. That’s fine, it’s perfectly serviceable. But when you’ve been gifted an actor who happens to have The Rock in his back pocket, why not let him loose – in all his arrogant glory – and watch the cash roll in as he layeth the smackethdown on some candy asses?
James Wan – a ‘Strayan, it should be noted – is that genius we’ve all been waiting for. Taking hold of Johnson (I’ll double YOUR entendre) and the rest of the packed cast of Furious 7 – the totally necessary seventh instalment in the Fast & Furious franchise – and eschewing normal directorial action like “punch him a few times and try not to look sad,” Wan apparently transported Johnson back in time a few years to the Attitude Era for his thespian motivation.
For this one brief, shining moment in the film, Johnson is back in his thousand-dollar buttonless shirts, and Jason Statham is a pre-Motörhead music HHH.
Cue J.R. – “ROCK BOTTOM. ROCK BOTTOM. ROCK BOTTOM.“
(I should note that I’m fully aware The Rock has been intermittently appearing in the WWE again in recent years. But watching John Cena take the Rock Bottom like there’s fifty pounds of sand in his ass is just disappointing.)
This is the kind of trend I can get firmly behind. More wrestling moves in non-wrestling media! If Dave Batista rips out a Spinebuster on James Bond, I’ll flip everything. If CM Punk locks Marc Maron in the Anaconda Vice on the new season of Maron, I’ll put a hole through my TV. Hell, if The Rock has to Samoan Drop a fallen firetruck to get to his daughter in San Andreas, I’ll burn the cinema to the ground and salt the earth. That’ll be it. Film will be done. It won’t get any better than that.
Furious 7 comes out on April 2nd, if you smell what The Rock is cooking.
