CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

So, The Rock has *it*. That may already have been evident to his wrestling fans, and maybe to others after his film debut in The Scorpion King, but I remained undecided. His performance in Scorpion was better than I expected it would be, but it still didn’t convince me that he was destined to blossom into a legitimate movie star.

But The Rundown has made me a believer. The Rock still has a few rough edges, but in Rundown he’s funny, cool, menacing and charismatic. Now, this is an action/buddy/comedy, so he’s not being asked to demonstrate a Method actor’s range, but he does an excellent job with the material at hand.

The film itself is mindlessly/mildly enjoyable, with some good action sequences, beautiful jungle scenery, trite-but-relatively-inoffensive storyline and dialogue, rapacious monkeys, an inexplicable Scotsman, and Christopher Walken doing an excellent impression of Christopher Walken at his most menacingly cruel. It also

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I don’t live in New York, I’m not a member of the literary intelligentsia, I’m not Jewish, I’m not single, and I’m not female. Crossing Delancey tells the story of a single, Jewish woman who lives in New York, and whose work has her rubbing elbows with noted, famous authors. Despite having nothing in common with the main character, Izzy (short for Isabelle), I *love* this movie. I think that it’s because I identify with Sam, the pickle man, who is Izzy’s sporadic suitor.

Izzy is played by Amy Irving, in one of her best, perhaps very best, roles. Izzy is an intelligent, upwardly mobile professional who seems to be making a good life for herself doing something she loves. She has a good, rent-controlled apartment, works at a prestigious old-style bookstore, hobnobs with the upper crust of the New York literary scene, and spends personal time with her life-long girlfriends.

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