Ah, the sweet sound of wrestlers acting.

Admittedly, the idea worked out pretty well for The Rock, but as for Stone Cold Steve Austin, well, the jury’s a bit out on that one.  But the folks at Anchor Bay are giving our boy Stone Cold another chance–they sent me a copy of The Stranger and now we find out how Austin’s newest foray into acting pans out.

The Stranger follows a man on the run–from both the Russian mob and the FBI.  Who is he?  Where did he come from?  What happened to leave him in this position?  There are a lot of questions in the Stranger’s life, but will there be any answers?  That’s what he’s on the hunt for in this movie.

There are those who compared this to old eighties-era VHS filmmaking, in which athletes like Jeff Speakman turned action star, and they’re not without basis for that comparison.  It really is a lot like one of those, with a lot of action, strange and overly complicated plot twists, and a whole lot of confusion.

Half the time I had precious little idea what was going on.  The other half was a blur of explosions, gunfire and unmerciful beatings.  Admittedly, things do start clearing up a bit the farther in you go, but that just means you’re going to have to spend large portions of the openers in a state of dazed confusion.

It’s kind of like California, but with more smog.

They’ll spend probably a bit too much time dancing around the theme of memory here, especially repressed or hidden memories, and it actually seems a bit out of place given the rest of the movie.  In a way, it works too, but it feels so forced that it’s like they shouldn’t have even bothered.

The worst part about The Stranger is that, despite the fact that it’s clearly an action movie that’s trying its level best to be exciting, it just comes off as dull and, indeed, forced.  It’s trying too hard, really.  I’ve seen more than a few action films in my day, and they’re not supposed to be really deep.  The Stranger, meanwhile, is frantically TRYING to be deep, but it’s just not working out.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale hands The Stranger a four out of ten for trying its hardest, but this turned out to be just a bit too hard.