CARD SHARK'S REVIEW OF:
12 ROUNDS (2009)

OPENING THOUGHTS

    I know that they landed on the name 12 Rounds for this film, but I think they should have called it The Marine 2: Civilian Life. John Cena has a problem keeping track of his girlfriend once more, and once again she gets kidnapped by another bad guy. But what makes this movie different is that now he's a New Orleans cop, and not a marine.

ACTING

    JOHN CENA is the beefy lead in this movie and I have to say, I like him better in this one than I did in The Marine. He still has the acting chops of a wrestler, but he seemed a little more fragile in this one and it worked well with the action. His character also owned a pug for pet which is cool. I have gotten to know a couple of pugs in the last few weeks and they are awesome. His sidekick for the movie was Brian White, who I loved in The Shield, and the two of them worked well off of each other.
    ASHLEY SCOTT plays the previously mentioned kidnapped love interest. She does okay with the part and I wouldn't be surprised to see her show up in a few more movies in the future. Hopefully, no more WWE movies though. Unfortunately her part was pretty short so there wasn't much in the way of development of her character.
    AIDAN GILLEN played the bad guy who was always one step ahead. He was pretty convincing as a bad guy, I know I was convinced that the character was not one you would want to cross, even on a good day. He also did a good job conveying that Cena was no match for him in the wits department.

DIRECTION AND SCRIPT

    RENNY HARLIN is a train wreck of a director. I feel obliged to list a short summary of his films in order to prove my point: Cliffhanger, Cutthroat Island, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea and Driven. There are many more atrocities, but I think you get the idea. I hate to say it but I think this might actually be one of his better films. He seems to have something in common with Tony Scott though. It looks like they both incorporated Google Maps into their movies. I sure hope Google is getting paid for that shit. At the very least he did get good performances out of his actors and that is worth something.
    DANIEL KUNKA wrote this severely overloaded script. It was called 12 Rounds because the lead character had to go out and accomplish 12 tasks at the behest of the bad guy. This is very straightforward and coincidentally, very boring. To date this is the only script he has been credited with writing, and it very well could be his last.

THE VERDICT

    Although the non-stop action and the performances tried their best to save the script, in the end this just turned out to be just another generic action flick. Trust me when I say that there are much better action movies out there. Odds are that I will never watch this one again, and it definitely won't be one that makes it into my personal DVD collection.
 
 

THIS FILM HAS BEEN RATED

D
 This is a bad movie.
Just because it could be worse doesn't mean it's good.
TO VIEW OUR RATING SYSTEM CLICK HERE
 

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