In "Walking Tall," the Rock is cross-checked, stun-gunned, knifed up, and left for dead on the side of a rainy highway, his long, pretty face smashed up pretty good. But ladies and gentlemen, you needn't worry. It's another day at the office for the professional wrestler turned actor, who was born Dwayne Johnson and who could have made this suspenseless action drama from his Jacuzzi.

Johnson is fun to watch in movies. As demonstrated here and in last fall's "The Rundown," he's big without seeming monstrous and can be serious without ever looking bored. The latter is a triumph of acting and feeling, given how monotonously by-the-numbers "Walking Tall" often is.

Johnson is Chris Vaughn, a soldier returned to his interracial family in his small, unspecified hometown after eight years away as a Special Forces operative in an unspecified war. An old buddy named Jay Hamilton (Neal McDonough) has closed down the old mill and opened a casino, where most of the town works or plays. On one outing, Chris tries to get the craps dealer to admit the place's dice are loaded. Security is called, and things get predictably violent. Chris winds up hospitalized and tries telling the police what happened, but they don't seem interested in getting to the bottom of who messed him up. So he heads over to the casino, breaks some arms and a few slot machines with a two-by-four, and is promptly locked up and put on trial, where he acts as his own lawyer.

As it turns out, his court appearance is a bid to announce his candidacy for sheriff. His closing argument doubles as a rousing stump speech. As sheriff, he tries to shut Jay's casino down, while romancing one of its strippers, a blonde from his past (Ashley Scott). Oh, and he has to clean up the crystal meth ring (also courtesy of Jay) that has his little nephew (Khleo Thomas) strung out.

To ensure that folks who like different kinds of horseplay (rambunctious, self-injuring pranks or professional wrestling) buy a ticket, Johnny Knoxville, late of "Jackass," is tapped to play Johnson's shifty deputy, Ray."Walking Tall" is a remake of the 1973 movie of the same name, in which Joe Don Baker plays Buford Pusser, the real-life law enforcement legend who cleaned up an entire Tennessee town with reluctant brute force - and a big stick. It was released amid the flood of social justice flicks that emerged during that period in which the wilting Western was repotted in the vibrant soil of America's cities and burgs. This remake, directed by Kevin Bray, replaces the original's rugged vigilantism with less urgent "Smackdown" fantasia.This isn't to say Johnson doesn't make the most of each assault. He hurts people with smooth, dancerly finesse. He wields that two-by-four the way Fred Astaire twirled a cane. There's something transporting in how both men interrupt a narrative to snap a neck or tap a toe, respectively.But beyond Johnson and his Rockness, "Walking Tall," which is credited to four different writers, is wanting for a reason to be. The other Vaughns seem like extras at their own dinner table. And the movie lacks both a sense of place - the original was redolent of the South - and a sense of sin; the '73 version had its share of sad, wearied whores. Pusser had a standard of living to restore. There's so little meaningful vice in this faceless anytown that Vaughn seems like he's just doing a screen test for taking on real blight.