Revenge is sweet in 'Faster'

For years now, the studios have been diluting their action films like girlie drinks at a college bar. They stir in sugary mixers like comedy ("The A-Team"), romance ("Knight and Day") or, even worse, nostalgia ("The Expendables"). Blech! Where can an old flickaholic get a stiff drink in this town?

You'll find one in "Faster," arguably the best straight-up action film of the year. It's also so mean, cold and angry that you'll be surprised it came from Hollywood.

There aren't many women in this movie - who needs 'em? "Faster" is about three men so stripped down to their basic functions that they don't even have names. It begins when Driver (Dwayne Johnson) exits prison and immediately begins hunting down the men who killed his brother. On his tail are a slick but slightly unhinged Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and a drug-addled Cop (Billy Bob Thornton) with their own murky agendas.

Screenwriters Tony and Joe Gayton, with director George Tillman Jr. ("Notorious"), aren't interested in fancy footwork or hip-hop bravado. Driver is a nearly wordless and utterly joyless killer; as tough-guy fantasies go, he's a dark one. Thornton's Cop is another surprise, eyes drooping, hands shaking, moral compass drifting. Killer, an overly intense Brit, provides the fun: While surveilling his next victim, he chats with his shrink via Bluetooth.

"Faster" borrows from brutalist action classics like "Point Blank," "Get Carter" and "Vanishing Point" (note the ever-present voice on Driver's car radio), and the comparisons are well earned. The plot unravels badly at the end, but by that time the movie, like its hero, has done what it came to do.