Kevin Bray
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The Rock looks nothing like Sheriff Buford Pusser, the Southerner whose real-life battles inspired the 1973 film “Walking Tall” and two sequels.
The movie is purportedly based on the "true story" of Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser that served as the inspiration for director Phil Karlson's original 1973 "Walking Tall," which starred Joe Don Baker as the stick-swinging lawman.
Buford Pusser was the name of the real-life Southern sheriff whose life formed the basis of the 1973 "Walking Tall," starring Joe Don Baker.
So far, so like the 1973 version of Walking Tall.
That's the question that plagued me throughout "Walking Tall," a remake of the 1973 hit movie of the same name, which spun off into two sequels and a television series.
In quick succession we're introduced to FBI Agents Donald Carruthers (Ray Liotta, "Goodfellas") and Richard Messner (Ryan Reynolds, 2005's "The Amityville Horror"), dispatched by FBI Deputy Director Stanley Locke (Andy Garcia, "Ocean's Twelve") to protect Aces so he can turn state's evidence; hit woman booker Loretta Wyman (Davenia McFadden, "American Gun") sends lethal lesbians Georgia Sykes (singer Alicia Keys), the catnip, and Sharice Watters (Taraji P. Henson, "Hustle & Flow"), the firepower; Darwin (Chris Pine, "Just My Luck"), Jeeves (Kevin Durand, "Walking Tall") and Lester Tremor (Maury Sterling) are chainsaw-wielding, mad-cap Road-Warrioresque neo-Nazis while torture specialist Pasquale Acosta (Nestor Carbonell) and 'Mission Impossible-style' master of disguise Lazlo Soot (Tommy Flanagan, 2006's "When a Stranger Calls" hark from overseas.
The situation is pure formula, rather like a western, or like Henry Fonda's coming home from prison at the start of "The Grapes of Wrath."
Nearly 20 years later, Karlson’s hard-edged sensibility hadn’t dimmed (we’re talking about the man who turned his two Charlie Chan movies — The Shanghai Cobra and Dark Alibi — into gritty films noir), but his aims were certainly more dubious.
Nearly 20 years later, Karlson’s hard-edged sensibility hadn’t dimmed (we’re talking about the man who turned his two Charlie Chan movies — The Shanghai Cobra and Dark Alibi — into gritty films noir), but his aims were certainly more dubious.
If the first film typified that era’s “Dirty Harry”-style backlash against hamstrung law enforcement, the remake reflects the modern action film’s illogical chasms.
…ridiculous macho slugfest attempting to reassert the '80s-style roid-raging revenge narrative (e.g., Commando, Rambo III), peppered with a dash of Charles Bronson vigilante justice, Walking Tall repackages the somehow-based-on-a-true-story kernel of its 1973 backwoods-cheapie antecedent as a glossy, noisy (man) tits-and-ammo walk-through.
After Vin's stumble last year in the tepid "A Man Apart," the Rock has followed with the exemplary action-comedy "The Rundown" and now this testosterone-pumping spectacle.