When history remembers the wrestlers who left the squared circle to try their hand at this movie lark, I’ll genuinely have no clue what they’ll say about Mike “The Miz” Mizanin. On one hand, the guy certainly has none of the screen presence or built-in audience of Dwayne Johnson or John Cena and he also doesn’t really have the dedication to the craft of acting that Dave Bautisa prides himself with as the roles the Miz usually gets only allows him to exhibit all the charisma of a milk carton. However, when compared to the list of other grapplers who have waited for the clapper board to give them their cue, he’s still streets ahead. Triple H, Ted DiBiase Jr, Mr. Kennedy, Hornswaggle – all of these names and more have tapped out when the pressure of the film industry had them locked in sleeper hold while the Miz managed to somehow front multiple installments of a strangely unkillable franchise. If you need further proof, behold The Marine 5 (no, not Maroon 5), that has him share the screen with a clutch of his WWE stablemates and witness the difference.
For a former Marine, Jake Carter sure knows how to pick his forms of employment. The last time we saw him, he had just joined a private security firm that was ambushed on his first day by mercenaries hoping to snuff a whistle blower in protective custody; but after understandably moving on from that line of work, we now find him starting his first night as a paramedic as he drives around with his partner Zoe. Now, first days on the job are always going to be a bitch, but you have to feel for Jake when the first call of the evening involves a wounded woman who ultimately succumbs to her injuries. Feeling dejected, any hopes that his evening might pick up are dashed when both he and Zoe find themselves wandering into the middle of some gang shit.
To go back a bit, a particularly vicious chapter of the biker gang known as The Lost Legion have had something of a bad night themselves after their leader was suddenly gunned down outside his club house by a random civilian and his partner and as they try to flee, retaliating bullets tear into them, seriously wounding getaway driver Cole and eventually killing his assassination buddy. Taking refuge in the car park of closed amusement park, Cole calls for a paramedic which soon arrives containing Jake and Zoe, but unfortunately, members of the Lost Legion, led by the vengeful Alonzo eventually manage to track them down.
From there it’s Die Hard in a parking lot as Jake and Zoe struggle to keep Cole alive while avoiding the various gang members looking the scrag their asses purely for the crime of being present. But while each of these hardened maniacs are a threat, they’ve never had to deal with an ex Marine before, whose list of skills far outshines the previous employment section on his CV. It’s Marine-ing time – said no one ever.
You know, as with the previous installment, there’s the bare bones for a decent little actioner here. You have a returning character with capable kill skills, you drop him in a classic John McClane senario and then you add villains and stand back and let the magic work. Unfortunately, that seems to have been the exact method the filmmakers have used, because at no point during this flick does it feel that anyone is making the effort to make this any more than just a generic, direct to streaming actioner that ends up being a cookie cutter product at every stage of its existence. It doesn’t help that the Miz’s tenure in the franchise seems to be getting less visually interesting with every movie as the rusting ship yards of the third film and the lush forests of the fourth have been replaced by a flick that’s set almost entirely within a parking lot. So maybe it’s a smart choice in terms of keeping costs down, but director James Nunn simply doesn’t have the skills to make the single grey location pop cinematically, even when people are trying to shoot one another within it.
However, while the franchise once again strangely refuses to let the Miz even show a hint of his in-ring persona, he’s now so used to fronting stripped back, low rent, action epics, he’s now the most reliable person on screen. He needs to run, the Miz runs; he needs to shoot, the Miz shoots and if the plot requires him to deliver the absolute minimum of character interaction, the he’s happy to do that too in a way that’s concise and by the book. However, I do find it exceedingly odd that the series insists on not having fun with itself at all. I mean, this is the second film in a row where Jake has started an entirely new form of employment (private security to paramedic is quite the jump) only to have his first day on the job ruined by murderous gunmen who want to kill him. Even John McClane had to concede that fighting terrorists on two consecutive Christmas Eves was pretty sus – so why not here.
However, while the Miz reliably does what it says on the action hero tin, the rest of the gaggle of WWE stars who appear don’t come off anywhere near as well. Packing the villain side of things with other wrestlers is actually an inspired move by WWE Studios, because not only will it appeal to the fan base even more, but as these guys simulate extravagantly brawling as a day job anyway, you’d think that the fight scenes would be nice and physical. However, the movie bizarrely elects instead to not only restrict most of its action to basic level gunfights, but also won’t let such wrestlers as Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel, Heath Slater and Naomi show any of their sports entertainment personalities either, opting to strictly keep them as one-note goons. Worse yet, barring a decent scrap with Naomi, none of the actual bouts of fisticuffs that actually occur have even a fraction of the pizazz and innovation that regularly takes place in the ring, leaving me to wonder why you’d make a movie filled with wrestlers, but neglect to do anything that wrestling fans would actually enjoy.
Still, for a film that has literally no plot (unless “the Miz wandering around a parkling lot like he can’t remember where he parked” counts as a synopsis), it just its job basically enough even if a lot of it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. An early cameo from the Miz’s actual wife (sadly, not dubbed “The Ms.”) is rendered unintentionally hilarious when she promptly dies at the beginning of the film despite being on the poster. Elsewhere, Bo Dallas’ sole villain trait seems to literally be to point a gun at whatever it is he’s currently looking at at the time and I genuinely have no idea who the hell came up with the character arc for Anna Van Hooft’s Zoe, although I’ll guarantee that you won’t see it coming. Also, I’m kind of curious why everyone goes around calling Nathan Mitchell’s gutshot Cole “kid” when the dude blatently looks thirty, but I guess at this point I’m just nitpicking.
As basic as an action film can get without losing all coherence and evaporating into the ether like steam, The Marine 5 isn’t just lean, it’s positively anorexic as it neglects to nourish its frame with any personality whatsoever. If you desperately want your action movies to feature wrestling stars struggling to hold a scene the have at it, but other may want to give it a Miz…
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