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The Rundown

Synopsis:

Beck is a "retrieval expert" and he retrieves is payments or humans or whatever. The main plot is that he's to bring his boss's son back from South America to face some sort of punishment. Beck wants to do this job so he can quit the "retrieval" business and open a restaurant.

The Review:

The Rundown is a silly movie. It tries to be funny and usually fails. Mostly it's just an excuse to eat popcorn and vege while watching action. One nice thing about it is that The Rundown is pretty well paced.

So the story starts out with us seeing what Beck can do. He goes after some football star who betted too much and needs to pay up. For some reason, they show some fancy stats beside everyone's face as they're identified. This is never done later in the show, so I don't understand why it was in there at all.

Beck gives the dude two options. Basically come nicely or get beat up. They always choose to get beat up. It's a running "gag" throughout the movie. Beck hates guns, so he kicks people and punches like crazy. After he wins, his boss tells Beck to go after his son, Travis and bring him back, as I mentioned in my Synopsis.

Thus, Beck goes to South America. Travis is busily hunting for some kind of gold cat idol and the town he lives in, El Dorado, is owned by a jerk named Hatcher. Why do I mention this? Because it has a major hold over the plot. Hatcher wants the cat (because it's worth a lot of money), Travis wants the cat for notoriety purposes, and Travis's (sort of) girlfriend, Mariana also wants it to buy the town's freedom from Hatcher. All these factors make it very difficult for Beck to bring Travis back.

Here's a run down of some of the major scenes in the movie:

1) Hatcher's men try to beat up Beck after Beck gives them a couple of options. (Beck also gave Travis options...argh!) This is a really lame scene in that one moment Beck is hiding behind a pool table with bullets flying all over the place and the next, he's flying through the air kicking everyone's butt. Did the bad guys suddenly forget how to shoot? Very dumb or just dumb editing. However, the actual fighting, while extreme (as in WWF extreme), was rather fun to watch.

2) Beck and Travis are out in the wilderness when they get caught by "the rebels." Travis is their friend and tells them lies to get Beck beat up. After Beck is smacked around a lot, he comes back and whomps the rebels pretty well. Then Mariana shows up and tells them all to knock it off. 

3) The final action scene involve a bunch of cows running amok. While they do that, Beck walks around hitting people. Eventually Travis gets into trouble and Beck picks up a gun and starts killing people left and right. It's actually reminiscent of a cartoon or videogame in that he doesn't even look where he's shooting but kills them anyway. My guess is the bullets are heat-seeking.

The Good Stuff:

The Bad Stuff:

Dumb Stuff:

This is a good movie for just sitting around and eating popcorn. It's also a good one to make fun of as it plays. The Rundown is pretty standard action fare. If that's something you like, then get it. But there's plenty of better movies (see my Asian Kung-Fu section for suggestions).

LANGUAGE: 1/2 (Too much, as always) 

OVERALL SCORE: 1/2