TV Times

TV Times

‘The Rock’ Conquers Amazon
By Harinda Vidanage
The Mummy Returns introduced a new face to the movie world in the form of the World Wrestling Entertainment champion ‘The Rock’ while the Scorpion King sealed his entry into Hollywood stardom the Rundown takes him from Egypt to Amazon another beautiful but deadly zone in the world.

Rundown is a perfect movie for the light of The Rock Christened this time as Beck a retrieval expert who to quit his job in this capacity has to do one last job, to retrieve from Brazilian forests an errant son of an underworld king pin and the retrieval job turn out to be more than a handful as he has to become a most hated on ones list and become a icon for a liberation struggle of the locals in a remote Brazilian village Helldorado.

Travis is the price that Beck has to go after. For the role of Travis, the filmmakers found the perfect foil to The Rock in actor Seann William Scott, best known for his comedic role as the iconic arrested adolescent Stifler in the American Pie trilogy.

Scott was eager for a role that was different from his previous work and collaborated closely with Berg to ensure that Travis retained the edgy quality that had initially attracted him to the character, but also gave him a chance to “graduate” from the previous roles he so indelibly created and after the break in Bulletproof Monk where he played the role of the unwilling protégé to Chow yon fat.

Hatcher (Walken) the dark character in the movie, a gold-mine owner who’s exploiting the entire native population using a ruthless militia and while Beck gets mixed up in the revolution with sexy Mariana (Rosario Dawson), he also discovers that Travis has located an ancient, immensely valuable jungle artifact also coveted by everybody.

The artifact becomes the center piece of the movie as Hatcher is after it as well as the rebels who badly need it both as a sacred symbol to free them from bondage and also to be used as high value asset for the future development of their people.

Hatcher needs a special mention played by Academy Award winner Christopher Walken, a recent Oscar nominee for his performance in Catch Me If You Can, was cast as the gold mine operator, a hold-out from Brazil’s gold rush boom of the 80’s who continues to plunder the countryside using the impoverished locals to make his personal fortune.

The filmmakers hoped Walken, an actor known for creating memorable characters even with limited screen time, would inject his own trademark quirky malevolence to an atypical villain. Says Walken of his portrayal of the despot, “All villains have to have a rationale and Hatcher thinks he’s bringing civilization to the jungle. He tries to justify that by being a citizen of the world and helping the down trodden. He’s terrible.”

The jungle locale figured prominently into the script and although set in the Brazilian Amazon, the filmmakers thought the lush, vibrant beauty of Hawaii’s own rainforests—complete with towering Banyan trees, spectacular waterfalls and other breathtaking locales offered a multitude of options for the film’s exotic setting.

About the star in Rundown, born in San Francisco and raised in Hawaii, Dwayne Douglas Johnson would become a third-generation professional wrestler, following the careers of legendary wrestlers, his father, Rocky Johnson, and his grandfather, Samoan High Chief Peter Maivia. He turned to wrestling and adopted the name of “Rocky Maivia,” which he eventually shortened to “The Rock.”

He became the youngest WWE World Champion at the age of 26. Moving swiftly up the WWE ladder, The Rock came to be known as the “People’s Champion,” a monumentally popular and innovative wrestler who is now recognized the world over as a modern sports and entertainment icon.

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