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.