The Rock Action Three Pack: Doom, The Rundown, The Scorpion King: Blu-ray Review (2009)

Three films, all new to Blu-ray, all featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

First up is “Doom,” which is trash sci-fi, sure, but it does achieve a lean, focused center and a final act that’s admirable in the tension it creates. Here, the Rock is Sarge (of course, he is), a tattooed beast leading an elite core of Marines on a rescue mission to Mars, where a mysterious 24th human chromosome is wreaking havoc on what’s left of the planet’s residents.

With the film’s genesis steeped in computer code--the movie is based on the popular video game--“Doom” predictably lacks soul, but it does generate the appealing, sketchy rhythms of a B-movie.

In “The Rundown,” The Rock surpasses pretty much everyone’s expectations in an action film that features him as a retrieval expert working a job in the Amazon. Christopher Walken and Sean William Scott co-star in a movie that’s fast and reasonably fun.

Finally, when it comes to “The Scorpion King,” what saves it from being just another souped-up movie driven by special effects, is that it knows what it is--an overblown blockbuster starring The Rock as a barely clad superhero seeking peace in the Middle East.

Billed as a prequel to "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns," the film actually is closer in spirit to "Conan the Barbarian": It stars a well-fed jock, gives him a sword, shoehorns him into a loin cloth, and then follows his battle headlong into evil. The movie is junk food, for sure, but it isn’t all salt and grease. The film is surprisingly fun--a big-budget action-adventure cartoon that’s smart enough to wink at itself while also raising an eyebrow at audiences.

Grade: B

View the trailer for each here: