The Marine

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. “WWE productions” might have been a dead giveaway, but “The Marine” is a brainless, loud action flick padded with stuff blowing up. The plot concerns an ex-marine named John (John Cena) who has been discharged for disobeying orders. John has trouble readjusting to normal life, seeing as he’s got an unspoken urge to kill or blow something up every 24 hours. When a group of jewel thieves, headed by Rome (Robert Patrick) steal John’s van and take his wife Kate (Kelly Clarkson) hostage they will soon find out that they messed with the wrong man. John just happened to bring along his deadliest weapon: himself! (That’s a line from the back of the Dvd cover but it’s so ridiculous I had to include it)

You can enjoy “The Marine” as an action movie because to be frank, it’s so over-the-top and ridiculous it becomes kind of fun. The characters are absurd and badly written, the action is so insane it would make some action stars from the 80’s blush and the acting is pretty lacklustre. When it comes to our hero, he’s pretty much just a block of wood that walks around showing off his awesome marine skills and killing bad guys. Aside from the fact that he doesn’t like to be messed with, loves his wife and that serving in the army meant everything to him, you don’t know anything about the guy. With a central character like this you’d expect to be bored out of your skull, but that’s when the villains come in.

The bad guys are made to be over-the-top slimy and it’s glorious. Rome is the leader of the group and the guy’s a complete lunatic. He’s the kind of person that will kill his own minions on a whim, feels no remorse about murdering innocent civilians and to be extra evil, will betray anyone if need be. He employs the nuttiest minions on his heist. We’ve got the sexy female girlfriend who’s just as ruthless as he is. She’s in the movie for some cheap titillation and to have a catfight with Kelly Clarkson (inexplicably, no nudity in this Unrated film) The rest are just generic mooks with a big target on their chests that are begging for our hero to kill them. The one exception is Morgan (Anthony Ray Parker), the mad dog who screws up every single mission because he just loves killing people and blowing stuff up.

What works with the movie, sometimes unintentionally are the action sequences. There are some pretty cool sequences where John murders the forces of evil one by one by blowing them up, choking them, shooting them or even throwing them at moving vehicles. This movie also helps you stay invested by having a massive explosion every 15 minutes or so. Yeah that means our hero is constantly jumping out of windows and narrowly evading huge fireballs, but he also takes a sledgehammer to the ribcage without wincing too much so just assume he’s some sort of Terminator at this point. As a “So Bad it’s good movie” you can make plenty of jokes at the actors’ expense, poking fun at the plot and such. What prevents it from pure “bad” gold is the horrendous comedy. Most of it revolves around Morgan and his stupid duelling banjo moments and references to “Deliverance”, but there was one joke I have to bring to your attention. The setup is that John is chasing the bad guys in what is clearly not a police car because it’s some kind of sports car painted black and white with signal lights at the top and it is being hit by hundreds of rounds of ammo. The car’s roof gets ripped clean off and to protect himself, John picks up a bullet-proof vest and holds it up in the air as a shield. The villains are just as baffled as the audience. That makes no sense; you can’t do that! One of the criminals yells “What is this guy?! The Terminator? ” Then the camera zooms in on Robert Patrick and he gives the camera a look like “Yes you’re right... that was me in 1991”. It’s a bad joke that left me with many questions. So in this Marine universe, there’s a movie called “Terminator” and from the characters’ delivery of that line, it sounds like it’s the same movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger that we know. Does that mean that in this universe there’s a sequel where the T-1000 is played by a guy who just happens to look incredibly similar to Roman? Do people go up to him and ask for his autograph all the time because they confuse the two? Could it be that in this universe, actor Robert Patrick turned out to be some kind of sociopath and after that movie moved on to a life of crime and changed his name? I know it’s just a stupid joke, but this plot is so bland and predictable that it pulled me right out of the experience.

Even for a movie starring a pro-wrestler, there’s no reason for writing this poor. It’s a bad movie but it does redeem itself a bit. Kelly Clarkson is actually pretty good in her role, Robert Patrick has either lost his mind completely or is having fun playing a bad guy, the special effects are good and the action is so out-there that you’ve never seen anything like the more elaborate action sequences. For those moments, it’s fun. For the comedy, lead and story, it’s dumb. Here’s what you’ve got to do. Get yourself a bunch of friends, pop this movie into your Dvd player and just laugh at the action. Bring some popcorn to throw at the screen when anyone says a bad joke. If you do that, it’s a pretty solid “So Bad it’s good” action movie. (Unrated version on Dvd, May 30, 2014)