12 Rounds (2009)

Directed by Renny Harlin. Starring John Cena, Aidan Gillen, Steve Harris, Brian J. White, Gonzalo Menendez, Ashley Scott, Taylor Cole, Kyle Clements, Peter Navy Tuiasosopo. [PG-13]

John Cena’s second starring film role isn’t much better than his first (The Marine), and it would still be a few more years before he started demonstrating the sort of onscreen charisma and humor he could use to properly fill out his limited acting range. He plays a police officer who’s responsible in large part for the arrest of a dangerous arms dealer (Gillen), but the baddie breaks out of prison a year later, kidnaps the cop’s wife (played by Ashley Scott, whose haircut makes her look like a sad broom), and sets up an elaborate—and enormously implausible and convoluted—game for Cena to play: “12 rounds” to test the mettle of his adversary and make him pay dearly. Mindless mash-up (ripoff) of several earlier, better action pictures (most obviously, Die Hard with a Vengeance and Speed), but Renny Harlin, who was a good director of action thrillers during the same period as those influences (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, etc.), has lost his way in that arena. The movements are choppy, the geography confused, the cutting relentless—the climactic fight aboard an out-of-control helicopter is downright incoherent—and since cheap but pleasurable carnage and thrills are all these kinds of muscular enterprises have to offer, hammering the viewer with poor technique is like hammering a handful of nails into a coffin. A pair of straight-to-DVD sequels followed with different, less-famous wrestlers playing the lead roles.

35/100