In 2006, John Cena quit being the Doctor of Thuganomics temporarily in order to become the latest WWE wrestler to leap from the top turnbuckle and deliver a thundering elbow to the silver screen. The result was The Marine, a fun but insanely derivative, bone-headed actioner that prioritised titan-sized explosions over actually letting its charismatic star act; however, regardless of its faults, Vince McMahon obviously figured it made enough moolah to justify ploughing ahead with more, direct to DVD sequels.
Of course, by then, Cena’s film career was already starting to blossom, but considering that the wrestling federation had dozens of other oiled up, pec-flexers lurking in the locker room, couldn’t they just do the dame with them?
Thus, in 2009, The Marine 2 was released in an attempt to channel another gladiator or the squared circle into the realms of the action movie – however, selecting Ted DiBiase Jr. to carry the flame was something of a confusing choice…
Joe Linwood is a Marine who, after a particularly harrowing mission that saw a child get caught in a crossfire, is taking some much needed leave to get his head together. However, while all he wants to do is just go home to Michigan and decompress, his loving life Robin has her high powered job to consider and pleads with her jacked, war weary hubby to join her. Luckily, her job is to arrange ceremonies and events for her entrepreneur boss, Darren Coleby, and the belligerent billionaire has tasked her with throwing the lavish bash that’ll signify the opening of his palatial resort in Thailand, so she and Joe jet off to paradise to soak up the sun. After a bit of dick swinging between Joe and his wife’s boss, they manage to settle down and even manage to befriend a grizzled old, burnt out, army vet who runs a snorkeling tour off the island, but the holiday is about to be violently cancelled when the opening ceremony is gate crashed by the worse kind of intruders.
Operating in full Die Hard mode, a gang of grungy terrorists led by the bloodthirsty Damo, launches an all out attack on the resort and immediately shows he means business by peppering the place with rockets. Once he’s taken the place, he demands a hefty tribute (aka. ransom) to make up for the rape and pillage of his beloved land and has no compunction about killing hostages to grease the wheels. While the government umm and ahh about what to do, one man who managed to make it out alive was Joe, who was taking a walk at the time, trying to cool down after a domestic. Realising that he has to get back in to rescue his wife, Joe insists on hooking up with a team of mercs hired to infiltrate the resort and prepares to whip some ass, but can everyone on the merc team actually be trusted?
So, if the plot of The Marine 2 feels a little over familiar, you may attribute it to to fact that it’s obviously another Die Hard clone that just happens to be set in a holiday resort; however, anyone who has seen the first Marine will also attest that it’s also just a massive retread of the first movie when it comes to how it’s lead character is handled. Firstly we see him on an explosive mission that requires him to step away from marine-ing for a while while his attractive, blonde wife seems pleased that he’s home from snapping the necks of insurgents and snipering bad guys. Then we see his attempts a being an average, everyday husband get torpedoed by a money obsessed villain who is played by a recognisable character actor whose presence will hopefully legitimise the movie as a whole and from there we carry on in the standard John McLane fashion until the bad guys are thoroghly dead and his wife is safe, sound and definitely not traumatised by the things she’s seen.
However, for all of its blazing unoriginality, I feel like I have to give the devil his due, because there’s a sense that the director is legitimately trying his hardest in order to do something spectacular with the tools he has at his disposal. While Roel Reiné may not be any close to becoming a household name in action cinema, a quick flick through his filmography reveals that he’s been work-horsing through the realms of cinema-bypassing action sequels for years, with follow ups to such films as Hard Target, Death Race, 12 Rounds and The Scorpion King under his belt. But here he’s dead set on avoiding a lot of direct to DVD issues by endeavouring to rub some big budget sheen on it like having most of the explosion happen live on camera rather than cook them up in a PC.
Elsewhere, he stages a two-on-one fight that even uses disguised edits to give the illusion that the extended brawl was done in one long, sprawling take which just isn’t something you expect to see in a flick that only exists purely to put more money in Vince McMahon’s pocket and it’s gratifying to see someone take some sort of pride in their work.
Obviously the characters are strictly cookie cutter and Michael Rooker and Temuera Morrison in particular are firmly in “take the money and run” mode, but at least they are all present. In comparison, Ted DiBiase Jr. wanders though the film with an empty glaze in his eyes that look like he’s been the unlucky recipient of some recent bouts of CTE and while I can’t speak for the man’s career in the ring (I wasn’t wrestling a lot at that time), his tenure as an action hero lacks the assued spark of a Dwayne Johnson, a Dave Bautisa, or a John Cena. In fact, it’s so weird that the first film dulled down Cena’s natural charisma to have him play an average, mail order meat head when the sequel hires someone who apparently exactly that to replace him and one wonders what the original choice, Randy Orton, would have been like.
Still, while all of DiBiase’s lines sound like he’s been doped up with horse tranquiliser and he struggles to have much chemistry with anyone (who the hell struggles to have chemistry with Michael Rooker for Christ’s sake?), however, whenever he’s required to point and shoot, leap away from explosions, or engage in a spot of fisticuffs with his wife’s life on the line, the wrestler-turned-actor does well enough even if it’s hardly a mystery why he was swapped out for The Miz for further installments.
Hardly a standout offering for a franchise that went on to have six instalments (each one sporting a different clutch of acting grapplers), but that’s not to say that The Marine 2 isn’t working it’s absolute ass off to try and cover its shortcomings when other films of its ilk would be content just to look like a cheap piece of shit. With a more vibrant lead in the title role who could have done a bit more with so little, the second entry in WWE’s premier franchise could have been a minor masterwork, however, as it stands for effort alone, the action in The Marine 2 deserves an honourable discharge at the very least.
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