REVIEW: Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson's Nipples Take Center Stage in Rambunctious Faster

Bullet-headed counterprogramming to this week's slate of soft-palate fare, Faster was built for speed, and for an action-savvy audience who can appreciate a throwaway vengeance flick for exactly what it is. Though the film's serviceable pretense of a plot is doled out in increments small enough to pull off a big, bruising twist at the end, Faster is about delivering -- early, often and without shame.

I'm guessing, for instance, that the number of frames that elapse before Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's nipples appear in puckered closeup is in the double digits. The former wrestler's famously overdeveloped physique is front and center and side to side: He plays a prisoner awaiting release, and the first image we get is that of a glistening animal furiously pacing his cage, his torso and terrifying neck muscles filling the screen. The crowd in the Times Square theater where I saw the film yowled with joy. It is on like Donkey Kong.

From those opening frames director George Tillman Jr. (Notorious) pulls out the Chuck Norris stylebook and heads to town: Johnson's prison exit interview is a hilariously chuffed-up mixture of kinetic visual tropes (a clock's ticking drowns out his interlocutor's voice; smash cuts, heavy half-shadows and extreme close-ups abound) and bald myth-making ("It was as if you were born to the darkness of this place," the warden, played by Tom Berenger, says, leafing through the headshots of those stupid enough to mess with the bionic inmate). Johnson's character, identified only as "Driver," hits the free world after 10 years in the clink and literally starts running.

Tillman and screenwriters Tony and Joe Gayton methodically parcel out what's got Driver so hot to trot. His first stop (after picking up a Dukes of Hazzard hot rod left thoughtfully waiting for him) is the lair of a fixer who has prepared a fully annotated shit list for his client. Because in every scene there has to be an iconic moment dedicated to the abiding badassery that is The Rock, before taking his leave Driver faces off with an equally imposing bodyguard, who sees a tattoo resembling some sort of Maori balance sheet on Driver's forearm and practically wets himself with fear.

What follows is a five-day killing spree and a series of flashbacks to the murder of Driver's brother. After he drove the getaway car for his brother's bank robbery, the crew was ambushed by a bunch of thugs with inside information. They took the dough and killed everyone; only Driver managed to take a bullet to the head and keep on trucking. Detective Cicero (Carla Gugino) is assigned to investigate Driver's first calculated hit; she's accompanied by a checked-out junkie colleague whom the film assigns one of its generics, "Cop" (Billy Bob Thornton). Called into action on a third and poorly integrated plane is "Killer" (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a bipolar tech-billionaire-turned-yogic hitman. Hired to rub out Driver by an "Unknown Caller" with a Sergio Leone ringtone, Killer is torn between the thrill of the chase and the homing signals being sent out by his long-suffering girlfriend's uterus.

As played by Johnson in full, granitic form, Driver is insensible to all but his targets; by way of offsetting the charm deficit and keeping the pre-flashback (i.e. pre-motive) sequences from sinking into empty nihilism, Tillman Jr. makes at least one of the hits -- a molester who is drugging and molesting a young woman as Driver bursts in to blow him away -- a total gimme. Even Cicero -- two steps behind as always; she needs a security video to figure out that a man who walked into an office building and headed right to another man's desk to kill him might have actually known that man -- agrees: "He did us a favor with this one." In time the usual revelations about Driver's past leaven his T-2 countenance, and the imperatives of moral discretion get the best of him in one case.

But ultimately, this is a not a nuanced portrait of ethical re-awakening; it's a film about The Rock's intensity-in-10-cities glare and giving it to them that bloody well deserve it. "I hope you kill them all!" an ex-girlfriend calls to Driver's back as he leaves her peaceful, suburban, baby-proofed home. "Wooooop!" goes the audience, in perfect, Twizzler-fueled concord.

Tillman Jr. keeps the largely procedural kill scenes popping, despite a tendency to lock down beats in a pattern rather than a rhythm. It's a fine line between self-conscious and suffocating: Much of the visual grammar and many of the would-be catchphrases are so anticipated, their arrival feels not just behind the beat but beside the point. "Did something happen?" asks the son of one of Driver's victims, when Driver makes good on his promise to call anonymously and pass on his victim's parting words. "Yeah," Driver replies, adding -- all together now -- "Something happened." To some extent the effect of this disposable and yet deeply committed thrill ride is that of attending a sing-along screening of a film you know by heart: The fun is largely a product of familiarity, the satisfaction less inspired by the thing itself than a side effect of knowing almost exactly what's in store. It's a specific pleasure, but one -- like The Rock's unstoppable abs -- that won't be denied.