ONE ON ONE WITH THE GREAT ONE
Central Intelligence
Review by Paul Preston
If there’s one guy I’m excited to see on a roll, it’s Dwayne Johnson. If you ever witnessed his miraculous run as The Rock in the World Wrestling Federation (or current WWE, which he still returns to occasionally), then you’ve sat in pure awe at how, armed only with a microphone, he could captivate 20,000 people for up to twenty minutes. He would hold them in the palm of his hand, eliciting laughs, call and response, the occasional song, birthing new catchphrases and nicknames on the spot. You could tell then he had the biggest movie career ahead of him, more than Steve Austin, more than Mick Foley, and more than John Cena.
It’s been a slow road to the leading man persona Johnson has carved out for himself now, as he slogged through duds like Walking Tall, Doom and Southland Tales. Even though earlier films like The Game Plan and The Tooth Fairy were hits, I don’t think Dwayne Johnson really arrived until Fast Five. The Justin Lin-directed fifth entry into the Fast & Furious franchise gave Johnson his best character to date in Hobbs, which utilized Johnson’s tough talk and charisma combo that made him such a hit in the wrestling ring.
In the last five years since Fast Five, Dwayne Johnson can’t stop working, appearing in eleven movies, a theme park ride at Universal, multiple Wrestlemanias and two seasons of HBO’s Ballers, with seven or eight more films in development, including Shazam!, Baywatch, Doc Savage, Fast 8 and voicing a lead character in the new animated Disney film, Moana. The appeal of Johnson as a movie star is that during all this, he seems to be having the time of his life! He’s like the Kevin Hart of guys taller than Kevin Hart. I suppose it’s only right that non-stop working machine Hart and Johnson should team up together eventually, and that’s happened in the new action-comedy, Central Intelligence.
Johnson plays Bob Stone, an old high school friend of Hart’s Calvin “The Golden Jet” Joyner. On the eve of a high school reunion, Stone comes back into Joyner’s life, having dropped a ton of weight and gained a ton of muscle since senior year. He also seems to have gone rogue as an agent for the C.I.A., but needs Calvin’s computer skills to crack a case. To reference this movie for old and young people, think The Hard Way, or Knight and Day. Mostly Knight and Day, as Johnson brings the same level of I-can’t-believe-how-much-fun-this-is-don’t-worry-about-a-thing-as-chaos-envelopes-you that Tom Cruise brought to Roy Miller. Stone loves C.I.A.-ing, whether it’s breaking laws to get information, or dusting up in a shoot-out, and the size frustration that Hart feels to be caught up in it is the stuff of classic comedy.
The Movie Guys encourage you to take part in what we’re calling “The Summer of Ike”, as Central Intelligence was co-written by Ike Barinholtz, who is appearing in Neighbors 2 and the upcoming Suicide Squad, as well as voicing a character in The Angry Birds Movie. We’re fans, and as long as he’s trying to out-work Dwayne Johnson, you should check out what he’s up to. I enjoy sharing a reference pool with Barinholtz and co-writer David Stassen and director Rawson Marshall Thurber. We must be of a similar age, ‘cause their love for dropping a nod to Sixteen Candles, Goodfellas and Road House made me smile a lot.
And you’ll laugh a ton at this movie. After being an instigator to Ice Cube in the very successful Ride Along movies, it’s fun to see Kevin Hart play the straight man, and this opens up Johnson to a whole new world of comic acting, which he jumps into 100%. The action part of the action-comedy is occasionally unique and interesting, but gets mired in a plot that’s not compelling and certainly not as much fun as the Hart/Johnson fireworks.
Central Intelligence also falls victim to a plot device that’s about a decade old that may deserve its own article to examine fully. In the end of the film Non-Stop, Liam Neeson saves a plane full of people (that’s a spoiler, but don’t see this movie), and once they land, he wanders around and wraps up all his plot lines with everyone. Same thing with The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Spidey fought with Electro, then right when he was done fighting Electro, Green Goblin showed up to the same location to have his fight with Spidey, like they lined up to wrap up their plotlines with the webcrawler. Dodgeball (also from director Thurber), Crazy Stupid Love and more have done this. It’s an odd thing to get weird about as a viewer, but there’s just something too methodical about it, to where it comes across as inauthentic. After Central Intelligence’s action finale, the characters go around from character to character and wrap up all their comic plotlines, just feels a little too systematic where the scenes might’ve been better off breathing a little.
In the end, it’s this great comic pairing (I swear this script sat around, waiting to be produced, until this casting came along) that is worth the price of admission, that and watching Dwayne Johnson once again hold the millions (response: AND MILLIONS) of The Rock’s fans in the palm of his hand.
Directed by: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Release Date: June 17, 2016
Run Time: 107 Minutes
Country: USA
Rated: PG-13
Distributor: New Line Cinema
