Saturday, October 28, 2006

The Marine - A Retrospective

What the hell, I’m bored, I just saw The Marine, like 3 weeks ago. I meant to write this several weeks ago. Anyway, review time? Keep in mind, I, The Phelpster, have no actual experience in the field of movie critiquing. However poorly written this might be, there has to be a review out there somewhere worse than this. So here we go.

It’s time for another popular WWE (where the hell is the “E” in the WWE logo, by the way?) wrestler to make his feature film debut. First it was Kane in See No Evil. Now it’s Grandmaster John Cena in The Marine. He raps, you know.

John plays a constantly dumbfounded looking beefcake who kind of resembles a really huge steroid injected version of what the love-child of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck might look like. John plays a character named…wait for it…John. A very brief plot summary: John Triton (Cena) is an ex-Marine who was kicked out for being just too much of a badass. Shouldn’t the movie be called The Ex-Marine? John’s wife, (Kelly Carlson) is kidnapped by Rome (Robert Patrick) and his unprofessional band of nitwit goons. John hunts down said goons to save his wife. If your wife looked like Kelly Carlson you’d do a little goon bounty hunting yourself.

In the first few minutes of the movie John is demoted from Marine to regular-ass guy. For some reason having to be stuck at home with his perfect looking wife just burns this guy’s ass. He immediately takes and is subsequently fired from a security job. Again, for being just too much of a bad ass. In short, this guy is a badass. So finally after much nagging from his wife, the two set off on a trip to…somewhere in South Carolina, apparently. They never really say where, or hell, maybe they did and I just wasn’t listening. I just know it wasn’t the beach as a zinger later in the movie clues us in on.

Meanwhile, somewhere nearby the plot is being set into motion. Rome (the guy, not the city) and his gang pull off some kind of elaborate diamond heist. They completely blow it like 2 minutes later by blowing up a police car. Hey, we’re walking to our car after stealing millions in diamonds, but the cops don’t have a description of any of us yet, let’s blow up a squad car in the middle of the street in broad daylight. That’ll help. The next day while Rome is filling up their stolen car with gas (which I assume they also intended to steal) and the gang is inside getting snacks for the trip, a couple of suspicious cops driving some kind of weird-ass abundantly-sirened Cop-Vette pull up. Rome and his half-assed posse aren’t too suave. They kinda have a way of drawing attention to themselves. Usually while blowing something up or killing officers of the law. By the way, aside from Robert Patrick , this gang consist of his hot girlfriend and a stereotypical trio of wacky black guy, hunky foreign guy and nerdy white guy. These dumb bastards end up killing the cops, then steal the car with The Marine’s wife since theirs was damaged in the shootout, and manage to blow up the entire gas station with The Marine himself lying unconscious inside. John, of course lives through the first of many huge explosions he’s in the midst of. He hops in the Copvette (which I could’ve sworn had tires blown out moments earlier) and the heat is on.

John and his raging nipples of fury will stop at nothing to get his lovely and equally dumbfounded looking wife out of T-1000’s diabolical clutches. He’ll operate any vehicle, kick any ass, dive out of any exploding building. By my count, there were no less than 4 scenes featuring ridiculously over the top building explosions with Cena jumping slow motion out of harm’s way and screaming. You know, screaming in a manly way, he’s not some kinda pussy. That’s pretty much the movie, after that it’s just John on a mission to save his woman. Some people will live, some people will die (you’ll know the outcome before the previews before the actual movie end). It’s very loud and dumb, but it’s not trying to be anything but.

The whole thing was a learning experience for me really. I learned if I’m ever driving a car while under heavy fire coming from numerous machine guns I’ll be okay if I just duck. I learned just because a couple tires on a car get shot out doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way the whole time. I learned that stories involving rock candy and pubescent summer camp rape can be humorous.

Complaints aside, it’s just the right combination of completely retarded and really loud to be pretty damn entertaining. At least once. Don’t think this is a DVD purchase situation, but I wasn’t asking for my money back afterwards. You will completely forget almost everything the second it’s over, but it’s fun while it lasts. It’s pretty much Commando, John Cena even wears face paint similar to Schwarzenegger’s in Commando. So if you are a fan of the big dumb, highly illogical and unrealistic action films of the 80’s give this one a look. For me it was 9 dollars….spent.

On a side note, this was the second WWE film (they make films now, you know) I’ve seen. The first being See No Evil. One thing WWE Films seems to have down, they both contain one standout spectacular death scene with one of the female characters being brutally, savagely, yet hilariously killed. They seem to be onto something I guess.

2 comments:

Isbum said...

Yep. Watched the same film, thought the same things, just didn't pay the money to get in.

Still wished I didn't bother.

Now, "Crank", there's entertainment!

phelpster said...

Yeah, Crank is fun times, I quite enjoyed that one. I normally don't watch stuff like The Marine, but my friend loves wrestling (well watching it, not performing it) for some reason and didn't have anyone to go with. Was not expecting it to be $9 though, yikes. But what are you gonna do?

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