Advertise

Wednesday 1 April 2009

WWE's "John Cena" now the hero of '12 Rounds'

April,1,09
Renny Harlin was the right guy to lift World Wrestling Entertainment's infant film division to something closer to legitimacy. If anybody could shoot and cut an action film to hide wrestler John Cena's lack of training as an actor, it's the director who made Stallone look like a mountain climber in "Cliffhanger."In "12 Rounds," Cena is positively Matt Damonish in playing a cop who battles an Irish terrorist who snatches his girlfriend. He still can't emote worth a lick, but it doesn't matter much.

Cena plays Danny, a beat cop who runs down a terrorist the FBI lost, and is promoted to detective for it.

A year later, the bad guy escapes from a prison and traps Danny in a game to save his girlfriend.

"It's our anniversary," Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen) purrs in an authentic Irish accent. "This is a game. Y' like games, Danny?"

Because Cena's playing a guy who has lost his girl, he's forced to play along, and Danny is sent hurtling through New Orleans, wrecking stuff and saving (or not saving) innocent bystanders.

Very "Die Hard 3," in other words. Except that in this movie, the WWE wasn't willing to spend a dime on casting a decent villain. Why not get a villain wrestler to do the dirty work? At least he'd be scary. I kept expecting this Gillen fellow to blurt out, "Aaaaaaallways after me Lucky Charms!"

Noisy and cut into a head-snapping blur with little room for humor, or for Cena to even try showing some emotion, "12 Rounds" is an occasionally exciting but always empty action-movie experience.
http://worldentertainment15.blogspot.com/

No comments:

Post a Comment