Faster (2010)

Official trailer

Faster is the 2010 George Tillman Jr.-directed revenge thriller starring Dwayne Johnson as Driver, an unnamed protagonist released from prison who immediately pursues the people responsible for his brother’s murder during a botched heist ten years earlier. Billy Bob Thornton plays Cop, a heroin-addicted police detective nearing retirement who investigates the resulting killings. Oliver Jackson-Cohen plays Killer, a wealthy assassin contracted to stop Driver. Carla Gugino plays Cicero, Cop’s police department partner. Moon Bloodgood plays Marina, Cop’s ex-wife. Tom Berenger plays the Warden, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje plays the Evangelist. Tony Gayton and Joe Gayton wrote the screenplay.

The film was produced on a budget of approximately twenty-four million dollars and grossed approximately thirty-five million worldwide. The work represented Dwayne Johnson’s deliberate return to harder R-rated action material following real work in family-oriented productions.

Don’t let the bare-bones title fool you, because Faster is better than it suggests, and I enjoy it a lot. It’s a lean, mean revenge picture, and grim, nearly silent Johnson suits him better than the family comedies did.

What keeps me from rating it higher is that the three-track setup promises more than the film delivers, and Driver himself never changes. Billy Bob Thornton is the reason I’d sit through it again.

Three parallel protagonist tracks drive this compressed revenge thriller, following Driver, Cop, and Killer through narrative trajectories that eventually converge.

This choice provides foundation for strong dramatic engagement that pure revenge thriller structure typically doesn’t generate. The audience experiences three damaged men pursuing their respective objectives across the film with specific connections gradually emerging. The work delivers established action satisfactions while working in a higher key than conventional contemporary revenge thrillers through structural and casting choices.

The Three-Protagonist Structure

The film’s central structural choice is the parallel development of three protagonist tracks. Driver pursues his revenge mission with sustained methodical commitment. Cop pursues the investigation while managing his heroin addiction and approaching retirement. Killer pursues Driver for contract reasons while addressing his own existential complications. The three characters are parallel studies of damaged men whose specific lives have produced specific current conditions. The convergence at the runtime’s conclusion provides resolution for all three trajectories.

The three tracks give the film more to chew on than a standard revenge thriller. Instead of one man’s rampage filling the whole runtime, we get three perspectives on the same bloody business, and the weight gets shared.

I like the idea a lot. I just don’t think the execution fully cashes it in. Thornton’s track is so much richer than Killer’s that the balance tips, and the convergence at the end feels competent where it should have been devastating.

The Dwayne Johnson Performance

Dwayne Johnson plays Driver with sustained emotional restraint that represents departure from his typical performance approach. The character speaks minimally across the film. The vocal performance maintains controlled tone that the character’s situation would produce. Johnson brings physical presence to the role while constraining the expressive performance elements that his other work typically deploys. The performance shows commitment to dramatic tone that exceeds typical performer vehicle expectations.

That restraint cuts both ways. It suits a man who’s had years in a cell to think about one thing, and it gives the film a hard, serious tone. It also leaves Driver with nowhere to go. He starts the film wanting revenge and ends it the same man, and after a while I wanted Johnson to let something crack. I’d have traded a few of the killings for one scene where Driver doubts himself.

The Billy Bob Thornton Performance

Billy Bob Thornton’s Cop performance represents the film’s strongest single dramatic element.

The character’s specific combination of heroin addiction, approaching retirement, family relationship complications, and professional engagement with the investigation provides real material for committed performance work. Thornton delivers the performance with sustained dramatic tone that the production allows. The work raises the surrounding film through dramatic engagement that other elements can’t match.

Thornton is the best thing in the film by a wide margin.

Heroin, retirement, a messy family and a case he can’t let go of would push a lesser actor into mannerisms. Thornton underplays all of it, with a tired body and a voice worn down to the wire, and I believe every minute of him. He’s the one character who changes across the film, and he’s the reason to watch it beyond the revenge thriller basics.

Is Faster worth watching?

Its three-track structure and committed performances from Billy Bob Thornton and Dwayne Johnson lift Faster into a competent revenge thriller. It carries no cultural weight and never pretends to. It marked Johnson’s deliberate return to R-rated material after his family-oriented run, and I wish he’d stayed in this harder lane longer than he did.

Faster gets a 7 from me because it’s a tough, efficient revenge picture with more on its mind than it needs, and Thornton gives it a soul. It loses points because the structure it’s so proud of never pays off in full, and because Johnson’s Driver ends the film exactly where he started. If you like 2010s action, Johnson in harder material, or revenge stories with some real character work, it’s worth your time.

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