Something occurred to me as I was watching The Rundown. The old-fashioned action movie has largely been M.I.A. because of a momentous shift away from traditional displays of testosterone. Back in the '80s, Schwarzenegger and Stallone gave us muscle-bound manliness, and then this was transferred to Bruce Willis's Die Hard hero-molds -- still tough, but also endowed with wit and attitude. But the '90s was an age of diverse inspirations, so the simple action movie fell by the wayside and took machismo with it. Asian cinema emphasized martial arts over brute strength; the gay population began a strong push to enter the media mainstream, redefining male images; gunplay became more about style than force -- all these factors changed the face of cinema to the point where the Arnold-movie had no place to go.

But this is America, and America will always have a home for pure muscle power. It just wants an updated hero for the times -- a new, perhaps more enlightened version of man. No longer can the all-brawn-no-brain model hold water. The modern man has to have charisma, and it must be authentic. Vin Diesel in XXX? No way -- too manufactured, and audiences can tell.

So in drops The Rock in The Rundown. He's got something. He's likeable. His character, Beck, is muscle-bound, but dressed stylishly. Confident, but not invincible. Humorous, loyal, honorable, even moral. And he uses more force gradually, when the situation forces his hand. Could this be the new, "enlightened" heroic model for the testosterone junkie?

Whether he is or isn't, he's in a movie determined to present him as one. The Rundown feels like it was made by filmmakers who graduated from the Jerry Bruckheimer Film School of Male Moviemaking. Fast editing, filtered shots, and loud sound effects were shown in a display that felt so familiar, I thought a trademark was violated. Some less derivative ideas worked out well, like Rosario Dawson as a female protagonist who isn't treated like a typical Bruckheimer sex object. Dawson's good-looking, but it's her toughness that's emphasized -- not once does her character entertain romantic notions with either Beck or Beck's quarry, Travis (Seann William Scott).

Mostly, though, the movie falls into formula traps (it should have been called Midnight Rundown, since it has the same plot as Midnight Run, even down to the main character's desire to retire and open a restaurant). It also opens much better than it closes, starting off very funny and devolving into lunk-headed simplicity before it runs out of ideas and ends in the most uninteresting way possible. Case in point: the movie has Christopher Walken, makes him a funny villain, then doesn't know how to dispose of him in an appropriate way. His exit is about as awkward as Al Pacino's in The Recruit.

However, through the jumble emerges The Rock, who becomes the main reason to see this movie. He turns it into a personal playground and does what he was meant to do -- get the audience on his side. And although the movie isn't anything special, The Rock makes the most of his chance to reach for stardom in a role where he can feel natural, show off some wrestling moves, get beat up a lot, and ultimately win the day. This is his bid to revive the action genre with his own breed of action hero, one with some cool moves combining  finesse and force, one with style to go along with the beef, and one who prefers guns only as a last resort. Fitting then, that the man in the early cameo in this movie passes the torch to The Rock. (Photo: Copyright 2003, Universal Pictures -- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)   

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Read a Q&A with The Rock and director Peter Berg.