The Rock has arrived, pure and simple. The Rundown may be a simple movie, with a simple storyline that wouldn’t normally be considered a star-making film, but for the wrestler turned actor, the movie represents a coming of age and a succession to the throne.

Please note, The Rundown would be nothing without the performances of the main actors, in fact I’m betting that they were specifically written, for the most part, for the thespians that step into their shoes. The film starts off in a night club where Beck (The Rock) confronts a football player on some past bets he placed, and his lack of payment. After a hilariously awkward first confrontation, and a one-liner from The Terminator himself, Beck returns to collect what he came for and opens the film with a very well choreographed, entertaining fight sequence. The film has style and this is evident in the way the director approaches the fighting in the film, as well as the dialog. It sounds simple and trivial, but the added ESPN-like character introductions in the beginning were very, very cool and never overused.

After Beck gets the short end of the stick from his bookie employer he is sent on one last job to Brazil where Travis (Seann William Scott), his boss’ son, is hiding out from some people he shouldn’t have crossed. Once Beck meets up with Travis the movie really begins. But where would a movie be without a quirky, twisted antagonist in the form of Christopher Walken’s Hatcher? Walken brings to the screen the hilarity we usually only get to see on his guest stints on SNL. Scott, brining himself away from the peanut-brained Stifler from American Wedding also delivers his usual charismatic performance as a novice-archeologist hunting for a rare find in the jungle.

The film is just one of those movies that comes along, usually out of no where, and broadsides you as a fun, witty, enjoyable piece of filmmaking that isn’t fishing for an Oscar, but isn’t settling for the lowest common denominator either. What you get is a cleverly put together buddy/action comedy (sans the buddy part) that features two of the hottest stars in Hollywood trekking through the Brazilian jungle. Being strung up in trees and violated by monkeys just adds to the fun.

The action scenes are what you pay for, and action is what you get. Beck, in the beginning, refuses to use guns, opting to only punish his victims with his fists, but in a hairy situation two shotguns make their appearance and the crowd went nuts. As I explained in my review of Underworld, it is rare that you see an audience get so involved in a movie that they cheer along with every gun blast, but it happened here.

The best reason I can determine for this interaction is The Rundown is an extremely fun movie. It won’t win any awards, it won’t even be nominated for them, but anyone who makes it to the movies this weekend, or next, to see this film will be pleasantly surprised they ever doubted the acting abilities and uber-coolness of Dwayne Johnson after his no-line portrayal of The Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns and his staring role in the film named after that character.

Truth be told The Rock makes this film enjoyable, and even if you aren’t one to watch wrestling (which I am not) you will still have fun with such a pop-culture icon as The Rock. The Rundown is one of the best reasons to go to the movies this fall.

It should be called “Sucks BALLiStic” because that is pretty much all it did for me. The real shame is I read some reviews before going in to see this mess of a movie and I was really hoping that people were just being jaded about the fact that Lucy Lui gets all of the good action roles, but, man was I wrong, this movie was just so stupid, after it was over I couldn’t help but want to take my own life rather than watch the credits and find out who made this questionable piece of trash.

I remember thinking to myself that sanding my penis off with an electric sander would have been more fun and entertaining, in fact, I would probably have enjoyed it more than the aptly titled Ballistic. Which, by the way, has the stupidest name this side of Ghost Ship.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is just as the name implies, it is a pairing of these two agents who are suppose to be real rivals of each other, the real problem comes from the fact that neither of them know who they are until like 40 minutes into the movie when they look each other up on the most poorly guarded government controlled server in the world. If a command like “GetPass[Word]” gets you into a government database this is a sorry country, but what would a movie be without wannabe crackers getting in to where they should be.

So they finally figure out who each other are, but the movie just isn’t equipped for that, you see director “Kaos” (who has the stupidest name in the history of film) only thought to give this movie about 20 minutes worth of meaningful plot, then the rest of it is just stuff happening because he wanted it to…right. So this big bad government guy wants Ecks (Banderas) dead because he is shagging up with his “dead” wife, and he wants Sever (Liu) dead because she stole his son who just happens to be carrying a piece of technology that can give a person a heart attack with the push of a button. How original, these guys must have watched an episode of “The X-Files.”

The problem is that they mini-mechanical little spider-type thing seems so post-production that I think they just added it to give the movie another excuse to blow up more and more stuff. I was surprised when I heard this movie had an R rating, there is nothing here that I haven’t seen worse in PG-13 movies. There seems to be some debate as to what a good movie is these days.

Acting is horribly done. Lucy Liu looks like she just got ripped off at Keanu Reeves’ garage sale and Antonio Banderas looks like he woke up from underneath his trailer.

With a movie like this, which has seen delays due to massive editing in post production, and seen countless other movies pull off it’s plot better and less stupid, it just feels so right to show some spite. Walking out during the retro-80’s love ballad was bad enough, but when I thought that there were others this weekend that had to go through such turmoil I cringed and said to myself,

“I want my six bucks back.”