From the days of watching El Santo and his Luchador buddies bodyslamming martians and vampires, to watching Hulk Hogan make a chauffeur literally shit himself with fear in No Holds Barred, the journey of professional wrestlers making the five star frog splash from the squared circle the silver screen had been a memorably rocky one. However, now that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is certifiably one of the biggest stars on the planet and Dave Bautisa has become a regular sight in Denis Villeneuve movies, the notion of the actor/wrestler is taken far more seriously now than it’s ever been.
Of course, you can’t have this conversation without mentioning the Doctor of Thuganomics himself, John Cena, a man who ruled WWE for what seemed like an eternity despite having a move set so limited it made Hogan look like Eddie friggin’ Guerrero; and while he’s pretty much conquered Hollywood too it all started here, with a film that bizarrely fails to capitalise on his greatest strength. Nope, not those insanely powerful muscles – that insane charisma.
We’re introduced to lantern-jawed, U.S. Marine John Triton when he disobeys a direct order and saves a bunch of hostages by obliterating a bunch of terrorists during a mission in Iraq. However, the thanks he gets for his explosive heroism is an honorable discharge and before he has a chance to process things, this man who could probably kill a grown adult with his left nipple finds himself unemployed and seeking work in the real world. His loving wife, Kate, is happy that her bulging hubby is not being shot at on a regular basis, but John is finding life as an everyday Joe something of a strain, especially after he gets fired from a security guard job after hoofing a douchebag through a nearby window. The ever understanding Kate suggests that John could clear his head if they both take a vacation but this decision will soon bring them into contact with danger and a shitload of explosions.
Meanwhile, slick career criminal Rome robs a jewelry store with his gang of violent oddballs and manages to get away with millions in diamonds, detonating police cars like oil fields as they go. But after a chance meeting at a gas station sees Trition and the thieves explosively butt heads, Rome and the gang take Kate as a hostage and after a frenzied car chase, dissappear into the nearest swamp to make their getaway. Not about to take a spot of wife-napping lying down, John switches back into Marine-mode to get his spouse back, but with trigger-happy criminals, secret bad guys, a random meth lab and yet more explosions standing in his way, can this near-immortal soldier manage to get the job done?
While making your lead debut in an action film is pretty much par for the course for virtually every wrestler who ever stepped in front of the camera, I truly don’t think there’s been any as relentlessly dumb as The Marine. Now while some of you may just feel that’s par for the course due to the stereotype of the kind of adult male who watches giant specimens of athletes throw each other about tends to have. Of course, that’s kind of unfair as a lot of fans are passionate, vocal and eloquent people (maybe not so much the “it’s still real to me, dammit” types), however, the producers – which obviously includes WWE owner Vince McMahon – have chosen to skew The Marine’s audience a little younger and deliver a movie so blasted off its tits on gunfire, wisecracks and fireballs, that your average wrestling promo edit carries more plot and weight.
The plot is so slight it’s slightly insulting and while a lot of the best action movies tend to keep the script nice and lean, I’d be stunned to discover if the single paragraph synopsis on the back of the DVD wasn’t actually a full reprinting of the screenplay itself. Beyond “John Cena fighting criminals to get his wife back”, there really isn’t that much else that director John Bonito can do to to pad things out other than blow as much shit as he can and have it look as slick as possible while he does it. However this is the movie’s biggest mistake, because by not taking advantage of the charisma and comic timing we all now know Cena has in spades and instead taking the bold choice to have him play a vanilla hero who get less screen time than the fiery eruptions he’s constantly leaping away from, the film might have had way more of an identity. Oh, Cena equits himself predictably when it comes to the physical brawling and he certainly looks the part, but the opening scene allows us to believe we’re in for a deliriously tongue in cheek ride that could have been the next Commando. However, once the film is done having Cena go full John Matrix on an al-Qaeda cell – complete with the sight of our lead screaming nonsensically while he fires a machine gun like Rambo – it shifts to its more basic setting which gives him far less to play with.
Ultimately, it’s bizarrely down to the villains to carry the film and former T-1000 Robert Patrick seems more than willing to pick up the slack as he and his team of psycho-panto villains spend the rest of the film chewing scenery, over acting at any given opportunity and even taking time out of their busy mugging schedule to actually break the fourth wall a couple of times. Quite why the movie wants its villains to be far more interesting and fun than its main character, I’m not entirely sure but considering what an unstoppable ad-libbing machine Cena’s been allowed to portray since, it proves to be a very strange choice indeed. Maybe the producers didn’t want the Marine of the title to be a goof in case it offended actual marines, but even if they allowed the man to loosen up by just a mere 20%, it might have helped carry the jokey tone a little better.
The action seems to be the main priority here and to give the film its due, it may adhere to the same rules of physics as your average Transporter sequel, but it sure is splashy. When things blow up – and they do. Frequently – you can’t help but wonder if someone’s stashed the odd block of C4 here and there because I’m fairly sure a basic car explosion shouldn’t be able to be seen from space. Elsewhere, there’s an entertaining car chase that sees Cena’s vehicle riddled with more holes than the plot by ridiculous amounts of machine gun fire and the fist fights all involve bruisers with forearms like tree trunks and if you were a twelve year-old member of the Cenation back in 06, this probably was your Citizen Kane before puberty came for you like the angel of death.
However, for all its bluster, bombast and an admittedly ballsy Terminator joke that’s as perfectly timed as it is stupid, The Marine let’s itself down by not letting us see Cena’s raw talent for comedic ad-lib. Yes, I understand there’s a painfully obvious joke about Cena not being seen here that practically writes itself, but if The movie isn’t going to embrace that aspect of its star, then I guess I’m not going to embrace the movie…
Semper Midelis.
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