12 Rounds

Movie Grade: C-

It seems like John Cena will not be happy until he has completely dominated every possible media circuit. Cena has tackled pro-wrestling with his outstanding athletic ability and strong stance against performance enhancing drugs. He has given hip hop a hostile takeover with his impeccable album You Can't See Me, one of the greatest pieces of music of all time. Now Cena is taking on the big screen with obviously Academy Award worthy films like The Marine. Now Cena, along with Renny Harlin (director of Die Hard 2) and Mark Gordon (producer of Speed), give the human race the gift from the heavens that is 12 Rounds. Now just negate everything above and you'll have an accurate background on all of this.

In this masterpiece, Cena plays Danny Fisher, an average cop just trying to get by with his girlfriend Molly Porter (Ashley Scott). Well it just so happens that Danny is in the right place at the right time. He runs into and arrests the largest arms dealer in the world, who unfortunately has the least intimidating voice in the world, Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen). One year after Miles' arrest and the accidently death of his girlfriend Erica Kessen (Taylor Cole), Miles escapes from prison. He hasn't forgotten all the trouble Danny has caused, and to get even he kidnaps Molly. The only way for Danny to get her back is to go through twelve rounds of Miles' games.

To start off with something small, it's really confusing as to what qualities something as a "round." The first round was Molly being kidnapped and the second was their house exploding. But some of the rounds were actual obstacles. Now to bring topics to something big, I can't believe how many times I felt like I was watching Speed 3. There is actually a scene with a bomb on a bus. Other Speed-ish scenes were, but not limited to, trying to stop a downhill trolley-car with its breaks cut, stealing a nice car to chase down his target and just kind of leaving the driver on the street, and the villain's weird obsession with explosives.

They go more of a Die Hard route at times, with a fire-truck chase scene, and a fight both in and outside of a flying helicopter. These were less frequent, even though Speed is a Die Hard rip-off within itself.

There's some repetition from The Marine as well, but that just comes in the form of the overall cheesiness of the movie. When Danny is chasing Miles early on, he cuts through backyard, hops fences, and runs through a house. I don't know about you, but I don't like my action movies to bring up thoughts of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Also like The Marine, there is some truly terrible dialog. When Danny's house explodes in the beginning,

his Plummer Phil (Kim Collins) was in the house. Before all of this happened, Molly told him to have pork chops when he was done. When Miles contacts Danny to let him know he was the cause, he says "It's a shame Phil won't be getting any pork chops." Is there anyone in the world that doesn't think that would be the least of his problems?

As much as I can bash this one (a lot) I have to acknowledge that there are people who'll like it. Most of them will probably be twelve year old boys who love John Cena, or just fans of generic actions movies. If I had to cram all of the problems with this into one overall issue, it would be that everything you'll see in this has been done before and better. I found myself laughing out loud in the theater at all of the stuff I pointed out earlier, so if you can appreciate truly bad movies this might be something you would enjoy. I know I did… in the sick way that I love terrible movies.

Movie Grade: C-

Synopsis:

WWE champion John Cena is New Orleans Police Detective Danny Baxter. When Baxter stops a brilliant thief from getting away with a multi-million-dollar heist, the thief's girlfriend is accidentally killed. After escaping from prison, the criminal mastermind enacts his revenge, taunting the cop with a series of near-impossible puzzles and tasks "¦12 rounds"¦that Baxter must somehow complete to save the life of his own fiancée.