Killing with the unswerving rigidness of a railway line

A scene from the movie Faster.

What you need to know:

Fast-paced and tightly written, this is an entertaining revenge thriller with strong performances, exciting action sequences and an impressively stripped down aesthetic that works well, writes David Tumusiime

Movie: Faster
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Carla Gugino, Tom Berenger
Director: George Tillman Jr

I used to hate The Worldwide Wrestling Federation (WWF). Give me the Buganda ekigwo any time! At least there was some realism in it. Some truth. The Saturday nights when I had to sit through two hours of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) before UTV’s Late Night Movie came on were some of the most dreaded of my TV time. The WWF was all-fiction. Fantasy. Until Vince McMahon, with his WWE, began to bring us better crafted fantasy. Like the fantasy that is Faster, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a WWE “graduate”.

Like WWE, Faster, the thriller, is about selling you a stereotypical fantasy. Johnson is the haunted step brother out of jail, relentlessly seeking vengeance for the killers who slit his brother’s throat after a successful heist turned awry when their hideout was hit. Johnson does not even have a “real” name. He is simply called Driver, because he was a good getaway-car driver.

The eternally falling apart Billy Bob Thornton (the guy who partly brought Angelina Jolie to fame), a heroin addict and absent father in Faster, is called the Cop. He is the most annoying cop in the department but everyone has put up with him only because he is weeks away from a pensionable retirement. But why is he, suddenly in his last weeks, hungry to solve the case of the re-offending bank robber who has never been a murderer? You see, the first thing Driver does after getting out of jail is put a bullet through the brain of a man in full view of a CCTV camera.

Hot on Driver’s heels is a super successful hit man who works for one dollar. Yes, like the Apple Chairman and founder, this hit man, played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, lives for the thrill of a complicated assignment. The harder the target to murder, the greater the thrill that ripples through his jaded nerves that “have beaten yoga.” Too good at everything, Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is infatuated with gunning down Driver before he can kill the next man on his list, who may be Killer’s client.

Like Killer, we come to admire, almost against our will, Driver’s “pure rage” as he moves from one kill to the next, with the unswerving rigidness of a railway line. In a movie of scene grabbers like Thornton, Tom Berenger (Warden), Mike Epps (Roy Grone), director George Tillman Jr reserves his best camera flourishes for the terrible majesty of Driver’s menacing approach, like a wrathful God on judgment day. Never was the lyric, put pedal to the floor truer than Driver roaring down yet another highway on his implacable hunt. Stereotypical, yes. Absolutely gripping, you bet! I watched it twice and I’m going to watch it again.