Faster (2010): C-

The Rock cooks up a return to kick-assery in Faster, and the smell is borderline-rank. A transparent bid by its star to reestablish his badass credentials after a string of family films, George Tillman Jr.’s B-movie is a revenge saga about Driver (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), who gets out of prison hell-bent on killing those who – in a double-cross after a bank robbery – murdered his brother. Though the Rock’s biceps practically bulge off the screen, his weapon of choice is an enormous-barreled revolver, which he puts to good use offing cretins while two pursuing cops (straight-and-narrow Carla Gugino and shady, heroin-shooting Billy Bob Thornton) follow close behind, cleaning up his messes. Tillman Jr. cross-cuts between flashbacks and various narrative strands – including a superfluous, time-consuming one involving a tech geek-turned-yoga-master-turned-assassin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and his girlfriend (Maggie Grace) – but no amount of sizzle can mask the inherent lack of momentum and imagination to Driver’s murderous rampage. Whereas Faster practically begs for excessive vengeful executions accompanied by so-stupid-they’re-funny one-liners, Tillman’s film goes for blunt, pedestrian violence and lots of silent grimaces from its lead. That Driver’s quest begins with him literally rising from the dead gives the proceedings a faint Point Blank vibe, but unlike that John Boorman-Lee Marvin neo-noir classic, this turgid actioner is a hollow poser through and through, devoid of true ferocity, heat and – as confirmed by a late, infuriatingly contrary-to-character act of mercy – guts.