John Cena hits the big screen for the second time. In my review of
The Marine, my biggest complaint was about the lack of an experienced director. That problem has been fixed as Renny Harlin, the director of
Die Hard 2, directed this movie. However, when one looks at the resume of his career, it is obvious that there was another movie he wanted to do in his career and tried to make it here.
The Actors
Since you are reading this review on a wrestling site, there is no doubt that the first thing you want to know is about John Cena's acting skills. He is OK on the screen. He has yet to develop a great screen presence but he is believable in his role as an action star. However, he doesn't have the fighting chops of a Steven Segal, Jean Claude Van Dam, or Jason Statham. He also doesn't have that butt-kicking presence of a Chuck Norris or a Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The supporting cast was led by Aiden Gillen, most famous for playing the part of Tommy Carcetti on The Wire, and Ashley Scott from Jericho.
John is able to hold his own with everyone on the screen this time around. In his last movie, his acting skills were ridiculously overshadowed by Robert Patrick.
The Director
Renny Harlin was a director that had a great start to his career and has had a tremendous plummet to it. The turning point of his career was in 1995. That year,
Die Hard: With a Vengeance was released. Instead of being involved with that movie, he was working on
Cutthroat Island. That movie was one of the biggest bombs in movie history as it made only $10 million despite a budget of close to $100 million.
I can only think that Renny must have been wondering how his career would have been different if he had done the third installment of Die Hard. The reason I say this is because of the tremendous plot similarities between 12 Rounds and Die Hard: With a Vengeance.
The Plot (contains some spoilers)
A local policeman foils a money making plot by an International criminal and kills someone in the process. Looking for revenge of this death, our antagonist decides to make our hero solve a series of puzzles in order to gain his revenge.
The hero will lose one of these challenges regardless of what he does because the villain needs a part of the city disabled to go through with his real plan, stealing lots of money from a federal agency that has tons of it. Our hero is the only person to figure this out despite having the aid of the FBI.
Without giving away the ending of the movie, the final scene of the movie for the villain involves him flying in a helicopter.
Overall Recommendation
As you can tell from my plot synopsis, the plot of this movie is the same as
Die Hard: With a Vengeance. However, while this movie does have a tremendous amount of action and some decent acting, it is not nearly as good as the third
Die Hard movie. To put this in a mathematical equation: Bruce Willis + Samuel Jackson + Jeremy Irons > John Cena + Aiden Gillen + Ashley Scott.
If you haven't seen Die Hard: With a Vengeance, rent it this weekend. While on the topic of renting, I would recommend waiting until this movie hits the DVD shelves instead of shelling out the money to see this one on the big screen.
