Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
4/6/09
I like my cheesy B-action
movies the same way I like my women... Come to think of it, there's
really no way in which that statement is true, but I couldn't think of
any better way to start a review of a movie like 12 Rounds, an action
spectacular so cheerfully, violently retro-cheesy it's from the director
of The Long Kiss Goodnight, stars a WWE wrestler and prominently
features a low-budget re-enactment of the climax of Speed 2: Cruise
Control. Now, I know what most of you are thinking: I need
to run screaming from the movie at my earliest convenience. Well,
fine, you do that, but for those of us who revel in this kind of crap,
12
Rounds is a buried treasure of unapologetic awesomeness. John
Cena revisits and improves upon the Big Ol' Goofy Lug of Unstoppable Heroism
persona he established in the similarly delightful The Marine.
Those on its' wavelength are invited to check their brain at the door and
strap themselves in: 12 Rounds is peddle-down junk of the
highest order.
One year ago today, New Orleans
Police Officer Danny Fisher (John Cena) and his partner Hank Carver (Brian
White) were called to assist the FBI after a sting designed to bust terrorist
mastermind Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen) went horribly awry. Jackson's
on the run along with girlfriend Erica (Taylor Cole), and when Fisher gives
chase, the girl ends up being struck and killed by a passing truck.
The arch-fiend vows vengeance, and on the anniversary, he delivers.
Now it's Detectives Fisher and Carver thanks to that high-profile arrest,
but they haven't been notified that Jackson led a prison uprising in which
all the guards were killed and the entire population made a run for it
(after all, no way would something like that be on the news). Only
Miles actually got away, and now he's calling Danny to propose a game:
12 challenges (I'll humor him and call them Rounds) starting with the destruction
of his home and kidnapping of his girlfriend Molly (Ashley Scott).
If the Detective can survive all 12 Rounds, just maybe he'll get her back.
I'll leave it to Molly to predict the outcome: “He's going to win.
And then he's going to kill you.” Let the burning buildings, bomb
scares and runaway trolleys begin!
There's not a single original
idea in 12 Rounds except for the delightful chutzpah with which
debuting screenwriter Daniel Kunka stitches together just about every movie
made in the 10 years following the release of Die Hard. Ridiculously
upstanding hero just trying to work out his relationship issues?
Check. Diabolical Euro-fiend bent on his destruction? Check.
An entire city of pedestrians ready to run for their lives as vehicles
come flying at them at unsafe speeds? Check. Wacky partner
who shouldn't make any long-range plans? Feisty girlfriend who fights
back against her kidnapper every step of the way? Odious Feds who
Don't Care Who Gets Hurt? Check, check and check. What makes
12
Rounds sing is that it doesn't just know how much fans have seen all
this before, it knows how much we want to see it again, and never stops
to take a breath. Renny Harlan, whose wildly erratic filmography
goes from the heights of the near-perfect sci-fi/horror/action extravaganza
Deep
Blue Sea to the lows of the incoherent Sylvester Stallone vehicle
Driven
(yes, The Covenant was bad, but Estella Warren's dress changes in
the middle of a scene in Driven!) here is back on his game, keeping
the spirits high and the property damage flowing.
My favorite setpiece nicely
encapsulates everything I loved about 12 Rounds (SPOILER ALERT,
INSOFAR AS I'M GOING TO FULLY DESCRIBE A WAY-COOL ACTION SEQUENCE):
Jackson leads Danny to a list of 5 cell phone numbers. Dialing one
will do no harm, while the other 4 are tied to bombs all over the city.
Danny quickly realizes that the numbers match the letters spelling out
what they are (CITY HALL, for instance), but his big thick fingers don't
type fast enough to get past the first two. He's got to just pick
one of the last three! So he does, and chooses poorly, detonating
a bomb that blows out the breaks on a particular trolley. He and
a helpful FBI agent race to intercept it as it rolls faster and faster
downhill, pulling his car in front of it and slamming on the breaks to
ever-so-mildly cut down its' momentum while Danny jumps on top of the trolley
to try and take out the electrical system. Doesn't work, so he's
back into the car, which he slams into a nearby transformer taking out
all the power in a multi-block radius. But that's not all!
The trolley isn't slowing down fast enough and is racing toward a street
fair, leaving the two heroes to run toward innocent people who must be
blind but don't seem to be deaf yelling “Run! Run!” until the trolley smashes
everything in sight. But nobody gets hurt. (END OF SPOILERS).
Again, most of you probably read that and are thinking some variation on
WTF? But for those of us saying “You had me at five different cell
phone numbers,” 12 Rounds is a masterpiece of nutty action nonsense.
There's a moment late in the game when I was absolutely certain Kunka only
named his hero Danny and made Jackson Irish so the terrorist could mockingly
sing “Danny Boy” to him. And I REALLY hope that's true, because the
moment is sublimely unnecessary.
Cena makes a great B-movie
action hero, all muscles and good intentions, not afraid to play his sincerity
for a laugh here and there (as when he pauses before rushing into action
to make sure someone watches his dog while he's off battling Evil).
Gillen, who shined as the villain in the underrated Shanghai Knights,
delivers the goods. I won't give away exactly what, but there was
something that bothered me about Jackson the whole time, and it turned
out I had caught a clue to his Master Plan. That's acting, folks!
Scott gets the Feisty Girlfriend role right and doesn't seem like a poseur.
Steve Harris boils effectively as the FBI agent who's lost all sense of
perspective in his fight against Jackson, but he can't do anything but
just start playing an entirely different character once the script requires
him to turn on a dime late in the game. White makes a good sidekick,
and both the police force and fire department are filled out convincingly
with lots of nice little performances.
I love junky action movies
as long as their spirits are high, and 12 Rounds LOVES being a crappy
action flick pitting a wrestler against a terrorist whose plan is so complex
it would make the heroes of Prison Break's heads spin. As
such, I loved it right back. You know who you are. |
