Rampage

Look, I like big smashy stupid fun as much as the next guy (have a look at my reviews of Kong Skull Island or Shin Godzilla). But the important part of that term is "fun", and this .. just isn't. It's a monotonously rote story as an evil corporation whose evil secret formula creates three huge monsters (a gorilla, a wolf and an aligator) who all gather to destroy downtown Chicago, and only the primatologist who used to look after the gorilla when he was merely a regular sized gorilla can possibly stop it, largely because he's played by Dwayne Johnston.

While Johnston is a charming guy, it tends to play here as more overly cocky ego than anything else (there's really no reason why he should be dashing around in the final battle beyond that he's billed over the title of the movie). Of the rest of the humans, Jeffrey Dean Morgan gets a few decent moment of shiftyness as the government liason, and nobody really embarasses themselves, but nobody really gets a particularly glorious moment either. The fighting is largely pretty rote, perhaps a bit bloodier and less-regarding of casualties than most, but that more plays as if the fights have been chucked at the CGI team without any co-ordinating ideas beyond "let 'em fight".

This is "nobody's trying very hard" cinema, and it's all rather pointless.