Dwayne Johnson. Rosario Dawson. Christopher Walken. This is a weirdly star-studded movie, if it were made today. Instead, this was likely at the height of Sean William-Scott's career and, well, that about sums this up. (To be clear, I don't think SWS is a bit actor; I actually think he's a solid actor with an unfortunate physical appearance and style that makes him eminently type-cast.)
But even so, you'd think it could manage to be passable with all that potential on the table. And yet, the plot never feels that coherent. Our lead character is effectively a fixer (and a super human) with an aversion for guns (a plot point that doesn't really ever pay off) and a desire to be a – checks notes – chef? I think he owes some money to someone, but it's never really made clear. He's sent into the Amazon to fetch back a mob-bosses kid who has located a "priceless" artefact worth a lot of money, but has tracked it to another mob bosses gold mine. Here, we have effectively a "capitalism is bad" subplot, complete with local rebel forces. It's all a bit weird, and we haven't even gotten onto the "Scottish" pilot with an accent that is frankly impressively hard to pin down, and who has a thing for shamrocks which they keep pointing out "subtly" for, well, reasons I guess.
Because that's the thing. Somewhere buried in this mess, there's a perfectly acceptable action movie. But scattered over the top are weird Tarantino-wannabe Bible-verse monologuing, crude monkey sex jokes, the world's worst lost tomb puzzle, and just a bunch of consistently awful dialogue choices.
And the action? Well, that's also all over the place, but at least in an interesting way. The film is famous for the very real cliff roll sequence, which is certainly an impressive stunt, and it somehow also managed to pack in a bunch of really quite interesting and stylised wire work, so clever mash-up fight sequences, and even some pretty well choreographed gun fights. It isn't enough to save it, but if you love stunt work, it's possibly just enough to be worth a watch. Just fast-forward the talking parts – you won't miss any of the plot.