![]() ![]() None are bigger (literally) or funnier than Johnson’s Paul Doyle. After multiple attempts to extort a rich businessman (Tony Shalhoub), the trio’s schemes become more psychotic (and hilarious) while the police are unwilling to believe three morons could pull something like this off.Ī brief comedown for Bay during his Transformers period, the film is refreshingly small, allowing room for some truly ridiculous characters to shine through. Based on a true story, Pain & Gain follows three gym meatheads (Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie, and Johnson) as they descend into violent idiocy in an attempt to get rich quick. There’s the oddly prescient mega-bomb Southland Tales and his excellent, twitchy performance within, of course, but it’s hard to argue that Johnson has ever been better than in Michael Bay’s acidic look at the American dream, Pain & Gain. Whether it’s essentially playing an AI-generated version of himself in anonymous blockbuster after anonymous blockbuster or having a bizarre meltdown over Black Adam’s lack of success, it could be easy to forget Johnson was once an electrifying new movie star.Īfter his initial run of starring vehicles, Johnson briefly allowed himself to be used in interesting ways by filmmakers with legitimate points of view. The one-time face of WWE alongside Stone Cold Steve Austin during the halcyon “Attitude Era” days has seemingly fully bought into his megastar status. It’s a bit tough to like Dwayne Johnson these days. Knock at the Cabin is streaming on Peacock, and available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu. All he wants to do is save that by any means necessary. He sees our world and the people in it and all of that messy beauty. Turning that on its head as Leonard is frightening. It’s something he brought to Drax that pushed him beyond comic relief. Bautista accesses an almost childlike state of being, one that fully accepts things as they are and finds wonder in their beauty. Few people have been this suited to Shyamalan’s earnest, occasionally goofy dialogue. Covered in tattoos, with a shaved head, and towering as if he’s the size of a house, this quiet and charismatic behemoth’s persistence of belief washes over you, making you second-guess yourself. It’s a remarkable bit of line-toeing, so to speak, maybe even making the events scarier because of the perverse sense of calm he brings. You might not believe his warnings, but you believe that he believes. There’s a flutter of pain every time he speaks, a sadness that breaks your heart. Their rantings and ravings are ludicrous, but Bautista centers that. Without him, this is a group of lunatics asking a family to do the unthinkable - to sacrifice one of their own on behalf of the visions of strangers. Your mind tells you this isn’t OK Shyamalan’s refusal to show him in full like he’s the shark from Jaws only exacerbates that, but his calming presence is enrapturing.īautista is the trick to the entire film. A man approaching a child and asking to be their friend is frightening in any context, but somehow, Bautista’s demeanor cuts through that into something almost soothing. ![]() The implication here, before we know anything about him or his plans, is already scary. Framing him in extreme close-ups, only a hand or arm visible, he greets little Wen (the couple’s child) and introduces himself as a potential friend. In Leonard’s introduction, Shyamalan makes brilliant use of Bautista’s size. ![]() As Leonard, the leader of a group of people having apocalyptic visions, he besieges a remote cabin, forcing the couple and their child inside to choose someone from their family to sacrifice in the name of saving the world. It’s this delicate nature and those tiny glasses that Bautista brings to Knock at the Cabin in the film’s central role. In just five short minutes (and a pair of tiny glasses), Bautista immediately stole the film from his more established co-stars, giving a haunting performance that lives in your mind long after he’s killed off. His light touch, despite being a giant of a man, took audiences totally off guard in Blade Runner 2049. It’s that latter role, Guardians of the Galaxy’s Drax the Destroyer, that’s given Bautista his most success, allowing him to flex his comedic muscles and the space to explore introspection in brief, quiet moments. In that time, he’s done everything from comedy to children’s movies to being a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Bautista, a former WWE world champion and future Hall of Famer if rumors are to be believed, has been acting for about a decade now. Perhaps most exciting about his apocalyptic potboiler is the hulking Dave Bautista at the center. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin, which continued his miracle “comeback” run as of late.
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