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Slick ripoff

This Walking Tall has next to nothing in common with Buford Pusser's story or credo.

Walking Tall is a crass example of stooping low to make a few bucks. It won't matter much for young viewers who haven't seen the original 1973 biography of Buford Pusser, an ordinary Tennessee man fed up with corruption in his hometown. Pusser routed bad guys with a large wooden club, got elected sheriff and survived a roadside ambush that killed his wife and maimed him.

Pusser was a folk hero in an era when Americans clamored for more law and order and less court protection of criminals. The movie was a phenomenon, a rural Dirty Harry or Billy Jack in the cathartic way it affected audiences.

The new version starring the Rock has next to nothing in common with Pusser's story except the title. The locale, events, even the hero's name and identity have been changed, ignored or pumped up beyond credibility. This movie doesn't vent against lawlessness; it revels in it, dotes upon it. Violence and vice are why the movie exists. Give this movie any other title and it wouldn't be much different than any straight-to-video action flick.

The Rock plays Chris Vaughn, another former Special Ops fighter coming home, seeking reasons to ply his deadly skills. Rather than Tennessee, his home is a small town in Washington's lumber country, too small and remote to be the plausible site for a glitzy casino/cathouse, open drug trade and a crystal meth lab run by a rich guy (Neal McDonough), an Aryan-looking sort with a personal grudge against Chris.

Yes, Chris tears up the casino and a few employees, Pusser-style. Yes, the villains carve him up and leave him for dead. Yes, he goes back for more destruction, gets arrested, is acquitted and then is elected sheriff when he shocks jurors by displaying his scars. But that's where scant similarities end.

The ambush becomes a full-blown firefight with automatic weapons ventilating Chris' office. There's a home invasion that never happened, a shakedown allowing actor Johnny Knoxville to show his Jackass side for the youth market, a stripper who becomes Chris' lover, and a too-tidy final confrontation. All this happens in less than 80 minutes, the work of four - count em, four - screenwriters. Even indiscriminate action fans will feel shortchanged.

The original Walking Tall was as gritty as this one is slick. Vice wasn't provided by a local citizen but traveling mobsters setting up shop in trailers and roadhouses. Joe Don Baker wasn't a sleek fighting machine like the Rock, but a believable brawler and champion of decency. Violence occurred in short, effective bursts. Director Phil Karlson's movie was nearly twice as long yet felt leaner. Chris Vaughn - in script and casting - is too indestructible to make us think he's in danger. Buford Pusser's vigilante style and the tragedy he endured were much more interesting.

Why call this movie Walking Tall and refer to Pusser, then bastardize his story? According to the official Buford Pusser Web site (www.sheriffbufordpusser.com) his daughter Dwana Pusser Garrison is promoting the movie, but I wonder if she has actually seen it, and what it says about her loyalty to her father if she has.

As someone who grew up in the South and experienced the original film's impact, the new Walking Tall is an insult. An end credit professes that the film is "dedicated to the memory of Sheriff Buford Pusser," but that rings hollow. I imagine if Pusser were alive today, that big stick he toted would be denting a few projectors.

Grade: C-

Director: Kevin Bray

Cast: The Rock, Johnny Knoxville, Neal McDonough, John Beasley, Barbara Tarbuck, Ashley Scott, Michael Bowen

Screenplay: Channing Gibson, David Klass, Brian Koppelman, David Levien

Rating: PG-13; pervasive violence, sexuality, drug content, profanity

Running time: 81 min.