Dwayne Johnson’s Faster is one of his most underrated movies and also a stealth remake of Clint Eastwood’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Johnson has spoken before of having wanted to play Jack Reacher in the 2012 movie of the same name, and this sounded like a good idea on paper.
He certainly had the muscles, height and intensity of the character from the books, but his career wasn’t in a great spot during the 2000s and Tom Cruise was cast instead. In a way, Faster became Johnson’s take on a Reacher-style thriller.
This cast him as “Driver,” who is released from prison and starts a rampage against the people who killed his brother. As the тιтle implies, Faster features plenty of car chases and action, but to the movie’s credit, it has a surprisingly involved story and well-developed characters.
Faster quickly faded from memory following its release though, being overshadowed by Johnson’s turn in Fast Five the following year. Still, it has developed a following and Faster is the closest thing to a Clint Eastwood-style Western that Johnson has made.
Dwayne Johnson’s Faster Is A Modern Update Of Clint Eastwood’s The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
There are actually three protagonists in Faster: Johnson’s revenge-seeking Driver, Billy Bob Thornton’s grizzled Cop and Oliver Jackson-Cohen’s Killer. The latter is an ᴀssᴀssin who has been hired by a mystery client to kill Driver, and naturally, all this climaxes in a showdown between the trio.
Having the story split between three antiheroes is one big way Faster evokes The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In a 2010 Cinemablend chat with director George Tillman Jr, he dove into the comparisons between the movies.
… it’s interesting that you said The Good, The Bad and The Ugly because that’s the structure of Driver, Cop and Killer that we tried to use. But you look at the Western backdrop and every character in the movie, the guys with no name, every guy has their own gun, their own style, their own wardrobe, their own music – same thing I did with Driver, Cop, Killer.
Tillman Jr’s film takes the basic template of the final Sergio Leone Dollars movie and gives it a modern update. Like Eastwood’s Man with No Name, Johnson’s Driver is also a man of few words and a crack sH๏τ with a revolver.
There are plenty of differences between them, though; the movie does reveal Driver’s full name and backstory, and instead of being ice cool, he’s constantly edgy and impatient. All three Faster antiheroes have sympathetic qualities too, in contrast to the pure evil that is Lee Van Cleef’s “The Bad.”
In the same way films like Star Wars used John Wayne’s The Searchers as a framework, Faster did the same with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The stories are ultimately quite different and Faster is nowhere near as good as Leone’s 1966 masterwork, but the DNA can definitely be seen.
Faster is also one of the rare R-rated action movies from Johnson, and arguably his best. It’s a pity he didn’t make a few more modest-budgeted thrillers in this vein, but the Fast & Furious saga soon took his career in a very different direction.
Faster Is Littered With Nods To The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Even if Faster doesn’t spell out its inspirations, it’s easy to spot the references to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. There are the nameless protagonists, with Killer, in particular, never revealing his actual name. There are numerous duels between Driver and Killer too, be it with guns or cars.
There’s the way the fate of all three characters feel intertwined, and how their feud sets up the finale. There might not be any horses involved, but Tillman Jr makes great use of Faster’s vast desert landscape in a similar style to Leone’s epic.
Faster co-stars Carla Gugino and Oliver Jackson-Cohen would later play mother and son in the Netflix miniseries The Haunting of Hill House.
Oh, and Killer’s ringtone is Ennio Morricone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme. True to its тιтle, Faster moves at a much quicker clip than the Eastwood Western and lacks the same cinematic sweep.
Still, Faster’s tone and unique style set it apart from the types of revenge thrillers being made at the time, which might be one reason it’s still remembered. Again, it’s no classic, but any film that riffs on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is worth at least a curiosity viewing.
Source: Cinemablend
