AFTER SCANTILY CLAD TURNS IN THE MUMMY RETURNS AND
The Scorpion King, The Rock must have been happy to get a part where he wears pants. But it wasn't just the idea of skipping the tattered look that appealed to the onetime WrestleMania star:
"I wanted to make sure the character I played was a strong, complex, interesting character."
So in The Rundown he's Beck, a bounty hunter on the verge of retirement. For his last job, he heads to an Amazon outpost to pick up a renegade-American Wedding's Scott-who's searching for a valuable artifact. (Hawaii and a park in L.A.-hyped up with CGI-sub for the Brazilian-jungle mining town.)
For Berg, who's directed only one other film, 1998's dark comedy Very Bad Things, the big-budget adventure "was a big undertaking. But I ran a TV show [2000's Wonderland]," he adds, "and I think that was harder than anything. Along the way, I prepared myself for this."
While Beck is a somewhat unorthodox hero-he hates guns and really wants to open a restaurant-Johnson assures fans he hasn't gone all soft. "If it's possible to hit a guy and loosen his teeth, well, [my character wants] to knock them all out." WHAT'S AT STAKE In a field of aging action stars, this is the 31-year-old Johnson's chance to establish himself as a new kind of king. (Sept. 26)
