There's a new Sheriff in town, The Rock as all he can be, dispensing some vigilante justice. The wrestler-turned-actor is officially this era's Action Star, in the mold of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis. He proved it with The Rundown after a successful first lead in The Scorpion King, spun off The Mummy Returns.

Walking Tall is a remake of other movies inspired by the life of Sheriff Buford Pusser, who cleaned up a small town with little else than a 2x4. Joe Don Baker played Sheriff Pusser in the original 1973 "Hixploitation" classic, followed by two sequels, then turned into a very brief TV series in 1981 starring Bo Svenson, who coincidentally is the preacher in Kill Bill Vol. 2, out this Friday.

In 2004, Pusser is renamed Chris Vaughn, and McNairy County, Tennessee is moved to rural Washington state.

	Excuse me, sir, allow me to remove that snipe from the bumper for you.

The Rock returns home from a stint with the Army Special Forces, only to see his hometown full of crime and drugs, run by an old friend-turned-enemy running a casino. But he walks into his house with his parents and sister like nothing happened, but he's been gone eight years! His nephew doesn't know him at all. Eight years, and he never knew the mill closed three years earlier, that his pal Johnny Knoxville was a druggie rocker in jail before coming clean, or his friend Neal McDonough became a bad guy?

Director Kevin Bray doesn't have much experience leading a movie, his only real Hollywood experience being the panned action comedy All About the Benjamins. It's not that he did a terrible job, considering Walking Tall is a basic revenge yarn, but you can tell the guy behind the camera isn't used to it. For instance, there's a shot of The Rock using a 2x4 to break a tail light, but it takes three whacks for us to see from the side of the actual tail light. Little things like that are noticeable.

This is really just a breezy action flick that's almost a B-movie. Quick and easy, at an hour and 20 minutes the movie gets to business and doesn't dawdle anywhere. If not for The Rock's presence, and great support from "deputy" Knoxville, it might have fallen into the straight-to-video category. Knoxville, repugnant as MTV's "Jackass," is actually pretty good as an action hero's sidekick.

The Rock's stripper girlfriend, played by Ashley Scott, (picky alert - her eyes just look too far apart) does little else than shriek and crawl around avoiding gunfire in her red bra and jeans. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Beyond this bit of female skin to please adolescent boys, throw in lots of gunplay, fistfights, broken furniture, whumps and grunts. Walking Tall is good ol' fire and brimstone, kicking butt and taking names, the bad guys learning fast that messing with The Rock is a fatal mistake.

I actually had to agree with the dirty cops for a bit, because even as The Rock was right to clean up the town he was in the wrong to get physical so soon with the casino guards. A clear-headed do-gooder would have asked the casino management about the cheating roulette table stickman before beating up seven guys single-handedly and getting nearly killed. But that's just me. When it's time to clean house later, we're all for it. Think Jesus at the moneychangers' tables, but with a 2x4.

McDonough, great in "Boomtown," unceremoniously screwed by NBC (rest in peace), has goons all over the place, armed to the hilt and playing dirty, the cops in his back pocket. In "Boomtown" he was noble yet dirty, in "Band of Brothers" he was sniveling, here he's just dirty and evil. Either way, I like the guy a lot.

For what it's worth, the movie is fun and not a bad way to spend an hour-and-a-half of a rainy day, which today was in Atlanta. But don't expect anything of substance, and try not to bring your ethical code along.

I immediately negated any and all machismo accrued from seeing this testosterone-filled flick by stepping into Linens & Things next door afterwards, buying a loofah and wicker basket for towels.