Yeah, so, for some weird, perverted reason that escapes me, I was compelled to rent a copy of John Cena’s hit WWE Film THE MARINE. You may recall WWE making a major push for people to watch this thing when it came out. Hell, you may recall that this was a bit on this humble web space for a time before the joke got tiresome.
Following the release of their first film See No Evil – the greatest horror movie ever made according to WWE – WWE Films begat THE MARINE, featuring then (and still) WWE Champion John Cena as a former Marine named John Triton (real creative in making the protagonist’s first name as the same as the actor’s. I’m sure Tony Danza would approve) who must save his girlfriend from a bunch of criminals. From there, we get a second-rate action movie that seems to rip off every single action movie in the book until the inevitable conclusion. Somewhere along the line, I stopped caring and read a book, which was unfortunately far more entertaining and enlightening.
The good news is that The Marine is not the worst movie I have bore witness to; that (dis)honor belongs to the Halle Berry flick Catwoman… though sometimes I will remember that Ready To Rumble exists, at which point I’ll ram my head against a wall once or twice before the selective amnesia kicks in. However, The Marine isn’t a bad movie in the sense that it’s so bad it’s good. It’s a bad movie in the sense that it’s not really that interesting or even exciting. For every action movie cliché this movie churns out, you can probably think of thrice as many flicks that could pull off the same trick, but better. “Perty ‘plosions” are nice and all, but mean nothing if there isn’t a strong backstory or even a remotely interesting conflict to drive the action. The Marine has neither of these things and it ends up being a ho-hum action film with a generic plot line. Not even the T-1000 himself, Robert Patrick, could save this flick.
I rarely have a good thing to say about Cena because I’m not a fan of his wrestling work, but given some good material, he could possibly shoot out a couple good movies. Those movies aren’t going to come from WWE Films, however. He has the talent and charisma to drive the movie, but the material he’s given is absolute garbage.
If you’re a fan of Cena, just stick with watching his matches and promos on RAW and avoid this movie. Trust me; you’re better off watching his crappy matches than his crappy movie.
dtm666 