THE RUNDOWN

STARRING THE ROCK. SEANN WILLIAM SCOTT, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, AND ROSARIO DAWSON; DIRECTED BY PETER BERG (UNIVERSAL, SEPTEMBER 26)


"It's like Midnight Run with a contemporary twist in the jungle of South America," says Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson of this action adventure, in which he plays a bounty hunter about to get out of the business and open a restaurant (insert "Can you smell whatthe Rock is cooking?" joke here). Of course, he accepts one lastjob: to nab an archaeologist (Scott) who's digging in Brazilian rain forest territory that's run by a corrupt mining majordomo (Walken)-who has all but enslaved the local populace. {25th Hour's Dawson plays a rebel leader.) Berg and other production members nearly lost their lives in a holdup while location-scouting in theAmazon, butthanks to a smooth-talking Brazilian driver. "[There were] a lot of guns." Most , all they lost was some money and equipment. "We went into the really wrong jungle," Berg saysof the filming ended up happening in Oahu, Hawaii, where Johnson (The Scorpion King} spent much of his childhood. "When I grew up there, I never had much," the actor says, "so it was great to go back and help out, and bring a lot of money to the economy."


GET A PIECE OF THE ROCK: "Women were literally coming up and asking if they could touch him, like a piece of exotic fabric," says Berg (Very Bad Things} of his star. And it didn't stop with the ladies. "In one scene, [Sean and I] get pig-snared, hanging upside-down in the jungle," Johnson says. "And these howler monkeys became very, very excited. Howler monkeys had their way with The Rock. I'm just going to leave it at that."