10 best Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson movies
10. "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" (2013): Jon M. Chu's sequel kills off most of the cast members from the original and lets new characters, led by Johnson, take center stage.
9. Skyscraper (2018): This one's a shameless mash-up of "Die Hard" and "The Towering Inferno," with Johnson scaling the world's tallest building to rescue his family from gun-toting arsonist bad guys. But "derivative" isn't the same as "bad." This outlandish action thriller has unbelievable but crowd-pleasing action sequences, with Johnson fully invested in his performance.
8. "Pain & Gain" (2013): Michael Bay's best movie stars Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie and Johnson as half-witted bodybuilders who kidnap a millionaire and immediately get in way over their heads. Sometimes it's overwhelming, but usually it's a hoot, and Johnson steals the film as an ex-con trying not to do terrible things and failing miserably at every turn.
7. "Central Intelligence" (2016): Kevin Hart was the cool kid in high school, Johnson was the bullied kid, and they meet up years later at a reunion, where it turns out Johnson became an international superspy and Hart became a milquetoast corporate cog. Naturally they wind up saving the world together. The scene where Johnson confronts his high school tormentor is the best acting of his whole career.
6. "Gridiron Gang" (2006): Johnson's best "serious" drama is this familiar but very effective sports movie, in which he reforms teenagers in a juvenile detention center by starting a football team. Director Phil Joanou doesn't pull any punches, dramatizing the harsh lives of these kids with palpable tragedy. Meanwhile, Johnson gives a respectable performance as the coach who realizes he's letting his past control him, just like his players are.
5. "The Rundown" (2003): Arnold Schwarzenegger has a cameo at the beginning of Peter Berg's film, telling Johnson to "have fun," as if officially passing the action-hero baton. And an early case is made for Johnson's superstardom, with Johnson playing a charming and thrilling bounty hunter.
4. "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" (2017): A group of teenagers get pulled into a video game, and they have to embrace new identities in order to get out. It takes the movie too long to establish its concept and rules, but once it finally gets going it's one of the most rip-roaring blockbusters in recent memory, with a dynamite cast (Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart and Jack Black) pulling double duty.
3. "Rampage" (2018): Johnson stars as a primate expert whose best friend, an albino ape named George, gets exposed to a sci-fi thingumajig and grows huge and aggressive, doing battle with a giant mutated wolf and a giant mutated crocodile. The plot makes no sense whatsoever, and the movie knows it, so it just runs full-speed ahead from one outrageous and well-executed set piece to the next.
