After WWE’s film devision allowed John Cena to vault over the top rope and closeline his way into the world of movies, I was curious as to what action vehicle they’d stick him next. After all, his first attempt at being an ass-kicking leading man resulted in the nice-but-dim The Marine, but for his next outing, a boat was pushed out (or sorts) that saw none other than Renny Harlin drafted in to try and riff on some of his past glories. In case you were unaware, Harlin was responsible for the likes of Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and Deep Blue Sea, so obviously the hope was that he would bring the same level of bombast to Cena’s sophomore, leading effort.
However, while Harlin may have been responsible for John McClane’s second outing, with 12 Rounds he curiously seems to think he’s remaking the third, as large chunks of the film seem to be blatantly ripping off Die Hard With A Vengence as its main charscter tear-asses their way across a city on the whims of a madman. Was Harlin attempting to belatedly relive his glory years using Cena as a proxy?
While the FBI run themselves ragged to catch recently surfaced arms dealer and terrorist, Miles Jackson, dedicated New Orleans beat cop Danny Fisher soon finds himself potentially out of his league when chance leads him standing in the way of Jackson’s getaway. No one likes becoming accidently important at work, but after successfully thwarting the terrorists escape, Fisher is also responsible for the accidental death of Jackson’s girlfriend, and while we find that he’s made detective a year later, it turns out that the villain isn’t quite done with him yet.
While Danny’s having relationship issues with his girlfriend, Molly, it seems that far more pressing problems than dodgy house plumbing are on the horizon after Jackson escapes from jail. Kidnapping Molly, he phones Danny for the standard bout of villain banter and reveals that he wants to play a game to get his hulking nemesis to jump through hoops for his sadistic amusement. After what must have been an insane amount of prep work for a dude who escaped prison only a few days earlier, Jackson has set up 12 rounds of tasks for Fisher to complete that involves puzzles, various races against time, and the odd bomb to diffuse with Molly forfeiting her life if her boyfriend comes up short.
However, if all this wasn’t tough enough, the FBI have once again descended on New Orleans in order to retrap their errant prisoner. But with the obsessed Agent Aiken seemingly far more invested in catching Jackson than he is preserving life, Fisher is going to have to pull off an insane balancing act if he’s going to stop the bad guy, save the girl, and avoid the feds while he’s doing it. 12 rounds stand between him and Molly, but can Danny make it through without losing on a technicality?
Someone at WWE Studios obviously thought they’d pulled of something of a coup by landing Harlin to direct 12 Rounds. However, it truth be told, the filmmaker was already seeing his best years (and movies) behind him after a string of flicks that failed to hit the mark. Yes, Harlin was responsible for making Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Cliffhanger, but he also had made Driven, Exorcist: The Beginning and The Covenant too and this is the version who we get to steer us through this remarkably derivative actioner. The chief issue is that vast sections of 12 Rounds really are identical to Die Hard With A Vengence as we get a loquacious villain with both a love of games and a formidable phone plan, who turns a city into his personal playground. There’s frenzied car rides through busy traffic, random side quests, meddlesome FBI agents and just when you think the Die Hard 3 well is dry, the script suddenly turns around and rips off Speed as well.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Harlin chose to put his own spin on it, but instead the Finnish helmer chooses to shoot the whole thing in Tony Scott vision, suddenly relying on vast amounts of rapid cuts and suddenly switches to CCTV footage in order to give everything an appropriately glitchy, twitchy feel. However, the sad fact of it all is that Harlin in 2009 was simply not the equal of John McTiernan in 1995, Jan De Bont in 1994, or Tony Scott in any phase of his career whatsover, and there’s a truly depressing feel that a former action giant has lost the expressive mojo that used to power his better loved films. Curiously, the secret to making 12 Rounds better was starting them all in the face the entire time – but at that point in his career, no one had thought to utilise John Cena’s innate charm and charisma that proved to be just as well defined as his absurdly huge pecs – maybe they just couldnt see him… Yes, The Marine made the similar mistake of forcing Cena to play the whole film straight, but at least that movie still planted its tongue planted firmly in its manly cheek. However, for some inexplicable reason, 12 Rounds chooses to play itself baffling po-faced despite blatantly being completely absurd. This means that in the rare moments Cena isn’t running for his life, clinging to an out-of-control vehicle, or screaming at a cell phone, the film literally gives him nothing to endear him to us as a person, and you’d be better off cheering a blurry mass of inhuman pixels in a video game rather than this personality void.
Even granting us a baddie with flowery verbal diarrhea fails to help us out as Game Of Thones’ Aiden Gillen doesn’t have much to add other than delivering verbose villain dialogue in an Irish accent. Despite holding all the cards and being appropriately despised thanks to his hiss-inducing role as Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish, the fact that GOT was still two years away from airing means Gillen’s appearance carries a disappointing lack of weight as he’s no Jeremy Irons and certainly no Dennis Hopper. Still, at least their roles aren’t as thankless as Ashley Scott who spends the majority of her screentime either with tape over her mouth or blankly reciting the bad guys latest rules.
All of this wouldn’t be so damaging if the action pulled its weight, but Harlin seems to be stuck in second gear, unable to breathe sufficient thrills into speed fire trucks plowing into parked vehicles and runaway street cars careering toward the public. In fact, some of the rounds start to get pretty weird and it’s genuinely strange to see the man who once hoisted both the Big Show and Edge on his shoulders at the same time have to save the day trying to pull a fat security guard up through the escape hatch of a plummeting elevator. And yet none of it proves to be exhilarating, gripping or even fun for the most part – which is extra confounding when you realise they made a couple more of these while swapping out Cena for other members of the WWE rosta.
Bizarrely dull for a film that’s dead set on ripping off as many other action flicks as it can, if we needed definitive proof that Harlin’s career had gone fully off the boil – it’s this. Sure, Mind Hunters was hardly a masterpiece either, but at least it had a good grip on how absurd it was. 12 Rounds should count itself lucky I actually could be bothered to go the distance.
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