Whatever one may think about his movies or his style of acting, Dwayne Johnson — better known as "The Rock" — is an action star. Thanks to his movies and especially his legendary run as The People's Champion in professional wrestling, Regardless of the movie's story and tone, Johnson is always expected to be a lovable giant or a cool anti-hero who makes quips. He's also expected to channel The Rock's charisma on occasion.

This is what makes his 2010 movie Faster so unique and special. At first glance, Johnson's character in the movie, Driver, is no different from his other roles. Additionally, the movie itself doesn't really stand out from Johnson's other works, especially if one were to just look at its poster and marketing. However,

Then and now, Like the action genre's legends who came before him, Johnson was a cool and righteous badass who knocked smug villains down a peg and plowed through their private armies like they were nothing. He had an incredible physique, he mastered every kind of fighting skill imaginable, he had one-liners for every situation, and he often cocked his eyebrow the way The Rock did. Johnson having a defined set of tropes isn't a bad thing, since it helped define his cinematic persona and made him memorable in audiences' eyes. However, the trade-off was that he had a formula that grew stale and repetitive overtime. Look no further than audiences' starkly different reactions to Johnson's celebrated debut as Luke Hobbs in Fast Five, and their exhaustion at his turn as Callum Drift in Red One.

This is what made Driver in Faster so different and refreshing. Unlike Johnson's other action heroes, Driver wasn't a power fantasy. He was deadset on avenging himself and his murdered brother; almost nothing could deter or distract him from his singular goal. Whenever he found his target, Driver skipped the drama and just went straight for the kill. He spent his time in between kills methodically planning his next move, and remembering the fateful day he almost died. Despite this coldness and ruthlessness, Driver was still human. Throughout the movie, he often questioned if killing those who betrayed him and his brother was worth it. Amazingly, Johnson did this all while barely saying anything, as Driver only spoke when it was absolutely necessary.

Besides his near-lack of dialogue, what made Driver such a fascinating character for Johnson to portray was that he wasn't a deconstruction or a subversion of the actor's persona. Driver was just as imposing as Johnson's other action heroes, and he also dominated his enemies in one-on-one fights. At most, Driver just didn't talk as much as someone like Hobbs or Beck from The Rundown would. However, Faster casts Johnson's intensity and physicality in another light. Instead of using these acting trademarks to be a typical action hero or another cinematic variation of The Rock,The terror that fell over those who were unfortunate enough to cross paths with Driver wouldn't have been as palpable as it was without Johnson's commitment to his role's darkness and internal turmoil.

Faster came out after Johnson established himself as both a family-friendly movie star and a cool action hero, and it proved that he had what it took to be a dynamic actor. All he needed was the right character and script. Unfortunately, The closest he came to following up Driver with an equally unconventional character was the dimwitted but dangerous Paul Doyle in Pain and Gain. Ever since his popularity skyrocketed after Fast and Furious 6 gave Hobbs more screentime, Johnson played it safe and stuck to playing variations of Hobbs and The Rock. Unsurprisingly, he stagnated as an actor after he didn't take advantage of his acclaimed performance in Faster. Thankfully, he's revisiting serious roles like Driver in his upcoming sports biopic The Smashing Machine. It may have taken him almost 15 years to do this, but it's better late than never.

Even if Johnson delivered a fine performance in one of his career's most underrated and overlooked movies, Faster isn't exactly a buried classic. The movie came and went in 2010. It barely left an impression both at the box office and on audiences' minds. In retrospect, none of this is surprising, since Ever since Taken reignited its then-stagnating genre and remade veteran drama actor Liam Neeson into an action star in 2008, action movies about unstoppable heroes who exacted furious vengeance on a horde of enemies became the norm. Faster was no exception. Its only difference from its contemporaries was that Driver hunted down a handful of targets instead of taking down an entire army by himself. Anyone who's seen a revenge thriller that only had a single, uninteresting world for a title has already seen Faster.

That said, Where most other revenge movies were exhilarating and cathartic thrill rides, Faster was not. Despite having an action star as physically imposing as Johnson in the lead, the movie was anything but a typical power fantasy. It was a bleak crime drama that examined revenge's paradoxical futility and necessity, while still retaining everything that audiences expected from an action movie starring The Rock. Every facet of the movie reflected this melancholia. The criminal underworld's cinematography was somber rather than flashy. The cast's performances were nuanced, despite their characters being familiar hard-boiled archetypes. The action was blunt and visceral. Here, violent revenge wasn't something to cheer for; it was something for the characters to contemplate on, and something for audiences to think about.

Most importantly, There are countless action movies about wronged action heroes who then hunt down those who betrayed them, but few (if any) of them seriously tackled their own implications while still retaining what makes action cinema so great. Faster had this in spades. Driver knew that killing the five people who left him and his brother for dead wasn't going to bring anyone back to life, nor give him back the 10 years he lost while he was in prison. He also knew that some of his targets have since genuinely reformed and tried to atone for their past crimes. Some even had families and loved ones now, and were doing their best to live an honest life. This and his own attacks of conscience, however, didn't stop Driver's warpath.

Johnson's stellar and uncharacteristically restrained performance didn't just breathe life into Faster; it made it. Faster would've been an infinitely different movie without Johnson in the lead. Given that it came out in a decade front-loaded with action movies that toed the line between being shamelessly juvenile and downright sadistic, — especially when revisiting these movies more than a decade later. Faster may not be a groundbreaking game-changer or a franchise juggernaut the way John Wick and its sequels are, but it's still a great and solid example of the action genre. With Johnson slowly returning to roles not unlike Driver, there's no better time than now to revisit Faster and give it the attention it deserved all those years ago.

Faster is now available to watch and own physically and digitally.