Trailer
Plot summary
Beck works as a debt collector for Billy Walker, a loan shark and bookie. Billy sends him to a nightclub for a championship ring held by a football player, and a fight with another collector ends with Beck saying he wants out. Billy offers one last task: bring his son Travis back from Brazil, and the fee will open Beck's own restaurant. In El Dorado, Cornelius Hatcher, who runs the mine, wants ten thousand dollars before Beck can take Travis home. Hatcher takes back that deal when he learns Travis found a golden artifact, O Gato do Diablo.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Rundown (2003)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For a scene on Oahu in which Johnson and Scott fall down the side of a mountain, Johnson's regular stuntman refused to do the stunt, so the production hired "a guy who has a reputation for just doing anything", and he was knocked out the first time.
- Berg and Misher were held up by armed robbers in Brazil in June 2002 while scouting locations, which prompted them to film in Hawaii instead, with shooting beginning in September 2002.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger's cameo came about on the spot: he visited Universal Studios during the shoot and was having lunch with Johnson when Berg asked if he would like to appear in the film, and Schwarzenegger agreed if they could do it immediately.
- Schwarzenegger's cameo as a bar patron who passes Johnson's character and simply tells him to "have fun" is widely regarded as a veiled reference to Johnson's career as a Hollywood action star just beginning as Schwarzenegger's was winding down.
- Berg bought a DVD titled The 50 Best Fights Ever Filmed, which at first demotivated him: "I just thought, 'Good God, it's all been done and it's all been done so well, probably with more money than I'm going to have.'"
- Dwayne Johnson, credited under his ring name The Rock, was paid $12.5 million for his role, and Berg said the movie could have been a dark, vicious action thriller but that its playful, funny tone was a tribute to him.
- Despite the positive reviews, the film was a significant box office failure, grossing just under $81 million worldwide compared to its $85 million budget.
- The movie was originally called Helldorado, and it was offered to director Peter Berg when he had made only one film, Very Bad Things.
