Walk Tall (2004): Speak Softly and Beat up a Casino with a Big Stick

Because Wrestling is a kind of acting.

There are movies out there that reach me to my very core, and then there are movies who fumble for the pleasure center of my brain like a teenage boy with a bra strap. The former are more often known as films, and we will not be discussing them here. Films have their awards, their prestige, their place in the pantheon of critics and top 100 lists. They are dissected in film schools, they are cherished, they are High Art; they have their place in the world.

I am not here to talk about films.

I am here to talk about The Rock.

Dwayne Johnson, God bless him, does have his own prestige, mostly among young male rural Southern WWE fans. The entire plot of the movie Walk Tall can be summarized by the pithy Teddy Roosevelt saying, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Actually, I don't know that Dwayne (aka "The People's Champion^" aka "The Brahma Bull" aka "The Corporate Champion" aka "The Great One" aka "The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment")'s character speaks softly, but the stick part, that's pretty much the film in a nutshell.

"Hold on to my bullet-stopping man-boob!"

So a Special Forces sergeant returns from his tour of duty to his rural Washington state town, to find that the Great Symbol of Industry, the old mill, has been shut down and replaced by a casino, effectively turning the workforce from millers to blackjack dealers, drug dealers, and strippers-with-hearts-of-gold. At some point, casino thugs torture The Rock with a knife, but neither labor issues, nor, you know, being tortured, is enough to move him to civil action.

Civil action, by the way, means beating up a casino with a big stick. And joyfully dismantling a villainous truck.

At this point I'm bored with describing the plot. You can guess for yourself how many times men grimace at one another, claiming, "This is my town." Or how many homophobic jokes Our Heroes make (Hint: nothing is funnier than ending a movie on a prison rape joke!). You can guess whether The Rock confronts the evil casino owner in a fight to the death, and if his shirt gets torn in sed fight. I won't insult your B movie intelligence.


Instead, let's play fun with genetics.

Raven-Symone's child will, of course, be albino.

I recall a theory introduced to me by my friend Isaac in Texas. A rerun of The Cosby Show was on, and without prompt, he launched into a genetics analysis as to why Denise and Vanessa are so much paler than any of their relatives: his theory was that Clair Huxtable had an affair with a white man dropped a few of his kids, and Cliff Huxtable forgave her. Isaac offered no theory as to the progressive whitening of the Huxtables by generation. (Aggressive vitilago?)

My friend bypassed any thought about the racism inherent in casting, in which paler African-American actors are considered more desirable, less threatening, more "accessible." In other words, whiteness is privileged over any appearance of ethnicity, at least when we're talking about the, uh, 'good guys.' (Good news, dark-skinned black actors! You can always get a non-speaking role as a cutthroat Nigerian rebel, a Sudanese arms dealer, or a Haitian criminal/refugee on Law and Order.)

Now, we come to Dwayne, The People's Champion, whose adult parents in Walk Tall are played by John Beasley and Barbara Tarbuck, an African-American and a white actor, respectively. Dwayne is biracial, but apparently the casting department failed to do a quick internet search to learn that the US-born actor is not of Caucasian descent at all; he is both African-Canadian and DISTINCTIVELY SAMOAN.



So according to the laws of Hollywood genetics,

This guy

PLUS

This woman

 EQUALS

 THIS GUY

This would not seem so preposterous if Dwayne, at 6 ft. 3 in. didn't tower over his costar-parents generously, making any scene with him and one or both of them look like the forced-perspective tricks Peter Jackson used to make hobbits sit down to tea with a big gay pothead wizard (I love you, Ian McKellen!)

Maybe Barbara Tarbuck had an affair with a Sudanese-Samoan guy and her husband was just happy to be a dad to a 15lb baby?

"Wait, is this more baffling than it is racist, or vise versa?"

Tune in next week, when I tackle Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus. I haven't seen it yet, but I'll probably want to explain why it's sexist or something.