Out of all the long running, low end action franchises out there, surely The Marine series was one of the most directionless. Starting out as a big screen vehicle for John Cena that often switched out logic for explosions, the WWE Studios led flick soon spawned a direct to DVD string of sequels that often switched out logic for smaller explosions and became a haven for a revolving door rosta of wrestlers who fancied their chances in front of a movie camera.
Soon, following Cena was Ted DiBiase Jr (for some reason) and after him came Mike “The Miz” Mizanin and the only real connective tissue between them all was that their characters all were (get this) marines at some point in their lives. However, with the fourth entry, the franchise made some sort of effort to get it’s scattered shit together and try and forge some sort of continuity by keeping the same wrestler locked in as the titular soldier – and you want to know what? It actually made a difference. I mean it was a very small difference, but a difference nonetheless. Oorah bitches, now we finally have ourselves a franchise!
We catch up with former U.S. Marine Jake Carter as he starts his first day at his new job at Hawthorne Global Security, a private security agency that’s gotten the gig to protect a whistle-blower who is about to testify against one of the biggest defence contractors in the United States. It seems that the Genesis Defence Corporation has some traitorous bad eggs lodged in its infrastructure and antisocial, former IT engineer Olivia Tanis managed to gather some info on their nefarious deeds.
Picking her up from a local airport, the good folks at Hawthorne Global Security do their jobs well with their fancy black cars and pressed suits even though an understandably paranoid Liv is a prickly as a cactus and hedgehog sandwich. In fact, both her and Jake are verbally tearing strips off of one another when disaster strikes in the form of an ambush staged by a bunch of mercenaries hired to rub Liv out like a giant pencil eraser holding deadly, semi-automatic weapons. In the hail if bullets that follows, both Jake and Live manage to wriggle away with their lives, but as they trudge through the forests to find shelter, their dislike and distrust of each other grows with the mounting pressure.
It doesn’t help that they’ve been sold out by a duplicitous member of Hawthorne and to make matters worse, the kill-squad on their tail is led by the cold blooded Simon Vogel who simply will not call off the mission until his targets are moldering in the middle of nowhere.
However, as the chase takes them by foot, road and all the way through a local police station and beyond, there’s one thing the mercs hadn’t counted on – Jake Carter and his fabulous merc slaying skills are on the case.
So first things first. While I understand that the title of the entire franchise is quite clearly labeled “The Marine”, I was still quite bewildered at the sheer amount of military worship that occurs during the opening credits. Details and facts of the history of American Warfare flash up on the screen way too fast to read in their entirety, as do various mottos and even the battle cry “Oorah” shows up too – but while this would totally make sense for a film actually set during a wartime skirmish (think maybe one of the low rent Behind Enemy Lines or Jarhead sequels), Jake Carter isn’t actually a Marine anymore. Yes, I’m familiar with the phrase “Once A Marine, Always A Marine” (I should be, it shows up in the credits), but Jake wasn’t even technically an active Marine in his previous movie either – actually, none of the previous Marines have actually been active for the majority of any of their movies as they’ve either been discharged or retired around fifteen minutes after the film has started. I understand that’s a weird gripe to start my review with, but you have to understand that The Marine 4: Moving Target comes complete with so little plot spread across its lean, 90 minute runtime, that I have to talk about something.
While there have been many classic movies before that’s zoomed through its adventure with a only a thimble-full of story to sustain it (The Terminator, Predator, Evil Dead 2), the filmmakers involved were savvy enough to take the light amount of plot and turn in highly inventive thrill-rides filled with character, the fourth outing for The Marine is content to try and almost be one, long, consecutive action sequence.
However, while there is virtually nothing here to bother any of the higher brain functions, the fact that this film is so dedicated to delivering nothing but full on action for what seems like 85% of its entire running time, it ends up making the film by far the best installment since the original. In fact, it seems like director William Kaufman and screenwriter Alan B. McElroy have studied the relentless pace of those movies I mentioned in particular and chosen to throw in massive chunks of The Gauntlet and Fair Game in for good measure in order to try and create a movie with no “boring” (read: talky) bits whatsoever. To a distracted fifteen year old raised on Stone Cold Stunners and People’s Elbows, the movie makes a perverted kind of perfect sense as the minimal plot is delivered in staccato bursts that mimic the ratatat-tat of the frequent machine gun fire.
In fact, Moving Target ends up being a perfect subtitle for the film because that one thing the movie does really well – fucking moves. You may not give a shit about the characters or why they’re trying so hard to kill one another, but you have to give credit to the undying dedication to gunfights the filmmakers obviously have. It also helps that The Miz is looking far more comfortable as the lead in a film this time around and the fact that he’s now been mercifully separated from the agonising family drama of part 3, he’s free to not be distracted by attempting to convey any complex emotions and just look competent kicking ass. However, while I’ll freely tip the hat to the guys staging all this action, not a lot of it is particularly imaginative and usually takes the form of everyone standing behind things while haphazardly blazing their way through the bullet budget. Still, a sequence set in a police station that sees officers recklessly slaughtered vaguely invokes The Terminator, the finale goes into Rambo boobytrap territory, the physical brawls are fast paced and smartly edited and wrestling fans of the 2010s manage to get a small bonus in the form of a secondary villain role for Summer Rae who gets prominent placing on the poster despite barely having a line of dialogue and not even being one of the main bad guys.
Granted, there’s nothing here to bother the likes of major action luminaries such as John Woo, Gareth Evans, Chad Stahelski or David Leitch, but you can’t argue that you don’t get your money’s worth and with The Miz now installed as the franchise’s main figurehead, there’s a sense that a notoriously aimless franchise may have begin to belatedly find its feet. It it could find some worthwhile dialogue and some actual story, then they’ll be all set.
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