Movie-Holic

When something is done right, it seems like there are a lot of copycats that just fall short of the original idea. 12 Rounds is Die Hard reincarnated. Well, to be perfectly correct, that would be Die Hard 3. Does that mean it falls on it’s face?

John Cena makes his second big screen appearance in the newest from the WWE in 12 Rounds. This is the story of a detective who has to take part in a game of progressively harder tasks in order to save his girlfriend who has been taken captive by someone he put away a year earlier. Each round consists of tasks that will lead to the death of innocent people if he doesn’t complete them on time. Much like the story line to the Die Hard 3 movie.

And it never seemed to leave me that this was a Die Hard wannabe instead of a high octane action movie that it was billed as.

That doesn’t mean that it was unwatchable. It was actually pretty good – when I look past the similarities to Die Hard: With A Vengeance.

John Cena plays a detective, Danny Fisher, who is forced to take part into a little game called ’12 Rounds’ in order to save his girlfriend. The gamemaster, Miles Jackon (played respectively by Aidan Gillen), takes Fisher’s girlfriend, Molly (Ashley Scott), on the anniversary of the night that his own girlfriend gets killed when Fisher arrests him. To get back at him he plans 12 separate rounds luring Fisher, cops, and resources all around the city.

I don’t really have a problem with the movie itself. I thought it was pretty good and really enjoyed most of the action scenes. However…

While the movie was good, I have to say that the acting could have used a little bit of improvement. I couldn’t help but compare two other different movies while watching 12 Rounds. Each one kind of built my thoughts on this one. Die Hard: With A Vengeance and The Marine. I couldn’t help it.

Cena was pretty good for his debut in The Marine. I like the movie and thought he played the revenge seeking Marine just the way it should have been. Likewise, Bruce Willis is phenomenal as John McClane in all the Die Hard movies. With those two movies in mind, I had to put Cena’s performance in this movie as severely lacking.

He just didn’t show any emotion. It was kind of flat. Everything seemed like it was forced. While in The Marine Cena showed tremendous amount of rage and pain, in 12 Rounds it just wasn’t there. Thankfully others were there to save the movie.

Steve Harris, playing FBI Special Agent George Aiken, does a convincing job as a jerk FBI agent. He was really easy to dislike, which I thought was what he was trying to do. Also, Aidan Gillen, who plays Miles the bad guy, does a decent job of being twisted and maniacal.

All in all, 12 Rounds is a good movie, not spectacular, but good. With the pretty obvious Die Hard comparison it dug itself a hole that might be hard to bring people in line to really liking it. Which reminds me… the story line isn’t the only thing that is a rip-off from Die Hard. The endings are pretty similar in the twist at the end. Let’s just say it’s not all about kidnapping and revenge.