The Rock Takes Big Time Leap

Donning an understated maroon collared shirt and a carefully tweezed and groomed goatee, Dwayne Johnson is all business this Monday afternoon.

It is difficult to believe that this subdued sandy-colored man is one and the same with the wrestler The Rock, who once weekly exhorted audiences to “smell what The Rock is cookin’!” But he doesn’t mind that a sliver of the black tattoo emblazoned across his chest peeks through his unbuttoned shirt and hints at his not-so-secret past. Indeed, the Rock is proud of the career path that led to his unexpected fall into acting.

“The wrestling vehicle made sense for me since I grew up in wrestling,” he says. “I didn’t grow up across the street from Juilliard.”

Yet, despite his professed pride in his past profession, the six-foot five-inch, 255-pound Miami native has seemingly distanced himself from his wrestling persona over the course of his acting career, catalyzing an image evolution that he insists is unintentional but only natural.

“What’s interesting is, it’s almost taken care of itself,” says Johnson. “For the past six months, I have been introduced as Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson, without a concerted effort on my part. But to me [the name is] no big deal.”

OUT OF THE STONE AGE

With Walking Tall, Johnson extends his convincing farewell to the days of five-minute mostly-mute bit parts, exemplified by his debut role as the Scorpion King in 2001’s The Mummy Returns. The journey began with the 2002 Mummy spin-off The Scorpion King and continued with last year’s The Rundown, for which he received a fair amount of critical praise. Johnson, however, was not content to expand just his acting chops in only his third lead role in a feature film, and he relished the opportunity to creatively contribute to Walking Tall from its inception to its production.

In fact, Johnson confessed, it was precisely his fascination with the creative synthesis of a film that led him to fully devote himself to acting.

“[On the set of The Mummy Returns], I thought it was amazing that it was all put together like this: with cast, crew, production—everything,” he says. “I thought, ‘Wow, I’m really a part of something there that’s really unique, and when I watch this on film, I know that I am going to be transported into this world.’”

But as Johnson embarked on the production of Walking Tall, he discovered that making a movie is not all fun and games. He says that his filmmaking responsibilities in the interpretation of such a popular, true-life story were particularly daunting.

An ardent fan of the 1973 version of Walking Tall, Johnson understood the heightened audience expectations for a remake of such a classic film and promised himself that he would only contribute to an effort that could maintain the quality of the original.

“It’s a little hairy trying to remake something that was actually pretty good cold, so we had to be careful,” he says. “The most important thing to me was to keep the intensity and rawness and the theme of Walking Tall—and what it means to walk tall, a story about standing up for yourself.”

Since the film is loosely based on a true story of good triumphing over evil, Johnston was also sensitive to maintaining the integrity of the legendary Buford Pusser story and obliged himself to truthfully adapt the film after personally meeting with the Pusser family.

“I wanted to let them know I have respect for his story, know that [Walking Tall] isn’t just Hollywood stretching of the truth,” he says.

With that goal in mind, Walking Tall aims to present a classic tale of redemption and revenge, a film about a homecoming soldier so morally offended by the corruption that has seized his hometown that he takes matters into his own righteous hands. Just how successfully the somewhat underdeveloped plotline accomplishes these aims is arguable. But in an era of directing when films race to distinguish themselves through bigger and noisier special effects, Walking Tall is a refreshing exception to the trend.

SIMPLICITY, SIMPLICITY, SIMPLICITY

Johnson says that he and director Kenneth Bray struggled to determine how they could produce an empowering, truthful film that could hold its own in today’s box office.

“How do you compete nowadays with your Matrix, your special effects movies that are amazing and mind-blowing… [when you have a movie] with no special effects? Well, you compete with real guys, real situations, real people, heart and soul, and when it comes down to it, the fight of someone who’s gotta try to exact revenge.”

Recalling the movies before the age of CGI, Johnson acknowledges and identifies with an audience’s deeper viewing connection to real and plausible movie characters.

“With a movie like this, with this type of action—hand-to-hand combat—what I wanted to try to capture was a way I could implement what made movies of the 70s really cool,” he says. “Just in terms of if a real fight breaks out with real men, what happens?”

Although it provides viewers with greater entertainment value, the productions staff’s commitment to minimal technical editing to preserve the film’s realism introduced a new set of difficulties, because it meant actors could easily face physical harm. But, according to Johnson, the danger was worth it.

“It was important to me to put visceral, raw action on the screen,” he says. “If I can make the movie better, if it satisfies the audience to see it’s really me in those shots, then it’s important. I never hesitated to get a little blood on my cheeks or a little dirt on my hands.”

While it is defensible to herald an actor for his guts in stuntwork, some wonder what judgment should be passed once his realistic stuntwork makes it onscreen and is viewed by small children. Does Walking Tall ironically encourage kids to walk short on temper and patience in resolving a conflict?

Not according to Johnson. He insists that Walking Tall cannot encourage unjustified violence because its main character, Pusser, had a legitimate reason for his actions.

“I don’t think he was solving his problems with violence. I think he was pushed so far. And when you think about it, he was cheated and left on the side of the road,” he says. “Depending on who you are, you are drawn to react.”

Johnson claims that Pusser actually showed great restraint in his actions. “He was always a reluctant hero—he was pushed to those circumstances,” he says.

But in the end, Johnson admits, violence is a vital part of the movie because it helps to satiate audience and societal expectations that the guilty will be punished.

“There’s a politically incorrect desire to see bad guys get their comeuppance,” he says. “I know that’s how it is with me. We want to see an old-fashioned justice. You know what I mean?”

THE EVOLUTION OF THE ROCK

Walking Tall is not a film that aims to break new ground or garner any Oscar nods. But it is an important step in the evolution of the acting career of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Johnson, who admits that he is working his way up to dramatic facility in “small steps,” jokingly referred to the challenges he encountered in portraying the drama during one pivotal scene in Walking Tall, calling it his “Denzel moment.”

He may be joking now, but, with each film, the quick-learning Rock increasingly appears to be more at home on the big screen, and the Rock is well on his way to establishing his own acting standard: “the Dwayne moment.”

-—Crimson staff writer Vinita M. Alexander can be reached at valexand@fas.harvard.edu.