Coming home, after being gone for many years as a soldier, he found that the old home town was in far worse shape than he left it, and none of the good people seemed to know what to do, unlike the bad people. He cleaned it up, violently. Things were all right, then, one supposes, because the story ended at that point.

Oh, sorry. No, I’m not talking about Kirk Douglas in The Odyssey, or even the version that this guy Homer invented some time back to cap his tale of a wandering soldier / sailor. This is the remake of a thirty-year-old film about a genuine Tennessee character, Sheriff Buford Pusser, who was originally played by Joe Don Baker.

The plot? Oh, I thought I just described it. And, yes, it really is three thousand years old, though in this case Ulysses (or Pusser) is one Chris Vaughn (played by Dwayne Johnson, aka “The Rock”), and the site has been moved from Ithaca (or Tennessee) to Kitsap County, Washington.

Interesting to notice that “The Rock” seems to be following the same path as Arnold Schwarzenegger, having now moved from pseudohistorical fantasies (The Mummy Returns, The Scorpion King — think of “Conan”) to more contemporary action films (The Rundown, this film — think Commando, Raw Deal). How soon, one wonders, will he star in a science-fiction hit? Well, he does seem to have acting ability, though I haven’t yet noticed in him Schwarzenegger’s apparently innate sense of comedic timing. In any case … well, “The Rock” is a native-born citizen of the United States. How soon will somebody think of running him for president? Remember, you read it here first …

In the short run, anyway, a pleasant little ⁽¹⁾ afternoon time-waster. I recommend that you see it. On rented DVD.