The Marine

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that pretty much tells you what you're in for the second the studio logo fades away. As soon as the 20th Century Fox logo and fanfare is wrapped up, what's the first thing we see in The Marine? We see professional wrestler, John Cena, dressed in a Marine uniform (the only time we will see him in uniform the whole film), saluting us, in front of an image of a waving American flag that has been badly inserted behind him with limited green screen technology. It kind of looks like a recruitment commercial that was made by people who just didn't care. But wait, it gets better! As soon as this image fades out, we're whisked away to far away Iraq where some American soldiers are being tortured by some Al Qaeda terrorist scum. Fortunately, John Cena's character literally comes bursting through a brick wall, automatic weapon drawn, and starts blowing away every single terrorist in sight. Yes, folks, welcome to The Marine, the second attempt by the WWE to break into the world of motion pictures, after their previous horror attempt, See No Evil, flopped at the box office. They've moved on to dumb action movies, and before the movie was even two minutes old, I knew this was going to be a very long 90 minutes.

As I'm sure you can tell by that opening paragraph, John Cena plays a soldier who is pretty much a one-man army, harkening back to the days of Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando. His character is named John Triton, and after pretty much single-handedly destroying an entire terrorist cell in less than three minutes without suffering a single scratch, our hero is discharged for not following orders and waiting for the rest of his squad to arrive. John is sent home where his loving wife Kate (Kelly Carlson) is waiting for him to return. John tries to settle into a comfortable desk job as a security guard at an office building, but gosh darn it, you just can't expect a guy to be satisfied with a desk job after bursting through a brick wall and killing hundreds of people in the name of his country! John gets a little fired up while trying to escort an obnoxious guy out of the building (by throwing him out a window, of course), and winds up getting fired. Surprisingly, Kate is not mad at her husband's violent mood swings or actions. She instead suggests they take a road trip together. And so, the happy couple head out for a day of fun and frolic, only to have to make an emergency pit stop at a gas station. Unfortunately, this is the same gas station where psychotic jewel thief Rome (Robert Patrick) and his gang of criminals just happen to be filling up their getaway car. When a police officer sets Rome off, the villain starts shooting people and takes poor Kate hostage! What's a one-man army to do? Go after those scumbags that kidnapped his wife, kill a lot of people, and then yes, kill even more people.

That's pretty much The Marine all wrapped up for you right there. The movie obviously tried to bring back a bit of spotlight to the long-forgotten 80s action film. A simpler time when John Rambo could fly back to Vietnam, rescue some POWs, blow up a lot of stuff, and everyone loved him for it. Of course, action films have evolved since those days, for better or worse. While I do think a movie in this style could still be fun, the way The Marine does it is all wrong. This movie is so ludicrously over the top that I had a hard time believing that this movie was even set on planet Earth. I certainly have a hard time believing that the character of John Triton is one of our kind. Aside from being able to destroy an entire terrorist army before most people finish stretching and yawning, the guy can survive an explosion when the building he's inside gets blown up. He simply walks right out of the massive explosion without a single solitary burn or bruise, nor any explanation as to how the hoo-hey he survived when everyone else in the building obviously died. He can also be shot at about 30 million times while driving full speed down a highway, and not suffer a single wound. He can plummet hundreds of feet to the ground, and immediately stand up and walk it right off. He can take multiple plows to the head, and still come back for more. Heck, the guy even takes a sledgehammer to the back and doesn't even blink! John Triton's not a Marine, he's a visitor from flippin' Krypton!! The movie never displays his ability to bend metal with his bare hands, but considering all the other feats the movie showcases, I really would not be surprised. I would not be an honest critic, however, if I did not say I found some unintentional amusement out of how over the top this film is. By the time John Triton was able to be shot at by numerous guns and still keep on going, I could no longer hold back the laughter that was building up within me. This movie is supremely dumb, and almost enjoyably so. Note the key word here - "almost".

What holds The Marine back from becoming a total guilty pleasure classic is when the movie tries to actually be funny. No, John Triton doesn't get any one-liners unfortunately. Heck, the guy barely speaks through most of the movie, he's too busy killing people and defying human endurance. Most of the film's "comedy" comes from the villains. Yep, they're people who murder innocent people for money, and they're the comic relief. Such examples include head villain Rome having a very serious phone call with someone, informing them of his demands, only to get another call on call waiting. He switches over from the important call, and places an order for Cable TV on the other line. Another example of the bright wit of this movie is when one of the villain rather suddenly out of the blue shares a time when he went to summer camp as a child, and supposedly tried some "sexual experimentation" with one of the camp counselors. Um...ha ha? Seriously, this movie is funnier when it's trying to take itself seriously than when it tries to make the audience laugh. Further insult is the absolutely atrocious music score provided by Don Davis. Taking inspiration from everything from James Horner's score for Titanic (John and Kate's love theme) to something that sounds like it literally come out of an old Looney Tunes short (played, oddly enough, when the main villain is hitting on John's wife), this is one of the worst film scores I've ever heard, and every scene that accompanies it is made even worse for it. What could have been a fun, dumb movie quickly becomes torturous thanks to some of first-time director John Bonito's decisions, such as filming many sequences in slow motion when it is not needed, or having the fight scenes edited so ineptly in order to avoid an R-rating that we can barely tell what's going on. Not that the screenplay by Michelle Gallagher and Alan B. McElroy isn't partly to blame. They can't think of anything for their hero to do other than to have him run through a swamp and randomly kill or beat up whoever he encounters along the way.

Do I really need to say anything about the acting? Is there anyone reading this who is on pins and needles waiting to know if John Cena is to be the next breakout star in the world of wrestlers turned film stars? Well, if you are one of those people, I will be to the point...Nope. Just about any action star could pull off the kind of stuff The Marine asks of him, and since he gets to display no personality or emotion other than murderous rage, he doesn't really get to stretch his acting muscles here. Andre the Giant's position as the best movie performance by a wrestler for his work in The Princess Bride is still safe and secure. (Although Hulk Hogan's cameo in Gremlins 2 comes in a close second...) As for the rest of the cast, well, Kelly Carlson mainly plays the role of the frightened hostage, aside from one scene where she actually gets to kick the ass of one of the villains for about a minute. Oh, and she apparently hails from whatever planet John Triton comes from, because she can not only be physically abused numerous times without showing a single sign of physical pain, but she can also survive a truck catching on fire and plummeting into a body of water. On the villains' side, Robert Patrick pretty much gives the same wiseguy "comic" evil performance he gave in 1993's forgettable video game adaptation film, Double Dragon. The rest of the characters are pretty much all human targets for John Cena or Robert Patrick to kill, so they don't really matter.

Okay, obviously The Marine is not supposed to be art. It's trash, and it knows it. But, even trash entertainment has to be entertaining. The Marine has its dumb fun moments, but not enough to warrant a visit to the theater or even a rental. I'm sure this movie will be a regular feature on Cable TV in a year or two, so you can easily hold out until then. What does the future hold for Mr. Cena? Well, unless he can follow the path of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and work his way into some real roles, I can't see him going far on this path. He's best to sticking with what he does best. As someone else so elegantly once said, when it comes to John Cena, I've "Cena" enough.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

3 comments