The Dwayne Johnson movie Dwayne Johnson doesn’t understand: “I’m still not sure”
The title of this article may seem strange, given how Dwayne Johnson isn’t exactly known for making movies designed to test an audience’s grey matter.
After all, cinematic endeavours like Jungle Cruise, Red One, Black Adam, and the Jumanji movies don’t feature labyrinthine plots or themes open to multiple interpretations. However, the Johnson movie assembly line wasn’t always as cookie-cutter as it has been for the past decade. In fact, there was a time during his early transition from the pro wrestling ring to the silver screen when the beefy behemoth actually took some risks with his movie choices. Hell, he even made one film he still doesn’t understand.
When Johnson starred as the Scorpion King in 2001’s The Mummy Returns, that wonkily CGI-d monstrosity signalled his intention to make a go of it as an actor. Before this, Johnson had risen to the top of WWE during its lucrative late ’90s Attitude Era as ‘The Rock’, otherwise known as “The most electrifying man in sports entertainment”. Fans always believed he had the potential to become a massive star in Hollywood thanks to his riotously entertaining character work and in-ring promos, and in the early ’00s, he set out to prove them right.
In those early Hollywood years, Johnson flailed to find the right lane for his particular brand of charisma. He made action flicks like Walking Tall and The Rundown, tried comedy with Be Cool, and took a run at kids’ movies with The Game Plan and Race to Witch Mountain. These movies all showed promise in one way or another, but none were a slam dunk. Still, Johnson was gaining experience with each one while experimenting with porting over his unique acting chops honed in wrestling to Hollywood. He told Film Ink in 2009, “My training and my theatre was the live physical theatre that is professional wrestling. That high-energy world translates well to Race To Witch Mountain.”
Fascinatingly, though, because Johnson hadn’t yet solidified the bankable persona he would later adopt in the Fast and Furious franchise, he took a flier on a project in 2006 that he would likely never consider today. It was the second directorial effort of a young filmmaker who had broken out with a mind-bending indie film in 2001. He was subsequently given an increased budget to realise a dystopian satire of the military-industrial complex and the increasing prevalence of infotainment news – and the result was a movie the world couldn’t make head nor tail of.
When Film Ink asked Johnson about Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, he laughed, “I’m still not quite too sure what that movie is about.” In the film, Johnson played the wonderfully named Boxer Santoros, an amnesiac action movie star whose story entwines with those of an adult film star forging a new career in reality TV and twin brothers on opposite sides of a totalitarian government and a neo-Marxist uprising. These stories all take place in the “Southland,” a dystopian version of Los Angeles on the brink of anarchy, thanks to the recent outbreak of World War III.
Naturally, this sounds like an incredibly ambitious and undeniably strange film for any filmmaker to bring to life, let alone one with only one small indie – 2001’s Donnie Darko – under their belt. Indeed, Kelly’s ambition exceeded his ability to make a coherent film. Largely baffled critics tore it apart before it only made $374,743 at the box office, and Johnson wasn’t even the only cast member to admit they barely comprehended what Kelly was going for. As Justin Timberlake put it in 2011, “To me, Southland Tales is performance art. I still don’t know what that movie is about.”
Sadly, Southland Tales threw a significant spanner in the works of Kelly’s career, and he’s only directed one theatrical feature since: 2009’s The Box. Its reception likely scared Johnson off attempting anything so esoteric again, and he soon settled into the groove audiences are too familiar with today.
Interestingly, though, Johnson remained glowing about Kelly, even if the movie they made together went over his head. He gushed, “I love Richard Kelly. He’s one of my dear friends. He’s a brilliant director who will eventually turn the corner and make incredible movies that will stand the test of time.”
Once again, Johnson wasn’t alone in this regard. In 2016, geek icon Kevin Smith – who had a small role in Southland Tales – told The Hollywood Reporter, “He is insanely creative and is not unlike Christopher Nolan. But Nolan wound up in the Warner Bros system, where he got special handling, and he got a lot of money to make huge art films like Inception. Richard can be one of our greatest filmmakers. He is right now, but just a lot of people don’t realize it.”
