Movies: 12 Rounds

Being a cop in real life can be a mixed bag, but if you're the police protagonist in a Hollywood action movie, it's all gravy. You can hijack cars, ignore your department bigwigs, and generally tear up a city as long as you're trying to catch a terrorist. "12 Rounds," an action movie starring WWE wrestler/actor John Cena, shows that if your girlfriend is in trouble, everything else in New Orleans is expendable:



The plot: NOPD detective Danny Fisher is forced through a series of 12 deadly challenges dreamed up by a ruthless terrorist who has kidnapped Danny's girlfriend. As you can tell from the trailer, "12 Rounds" unabashedly borrows from other, better action movies. The primary inspiration is the "Die Hard" series: there's a foreign-y main villain that chats up Cena's character, an Awesome Black Partner, and a series of race-against-time sequences that always have explosive payoffs.

The concept was a bit tedious when it starred Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson in "Die Hard with a Vengeance;" here, it's rendered nearly unwatchable by wooden performances from Cena and his costars. Unlike wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Cena doesn't have the charisma and comedic timing to bring levity to the screen, nor can Cena bank on the Everyman persona of other action stars (it's hard to feel like an Average Joe on film when you're 6'1" and 240 pounds).

The only saving grace "12 Rounds" might have is the enjoyment of laughing at the silliness on screen. There's one scene that illustrates how close to farce the movie gets: Danny Fisher commandeers a fire engine and races toward his next objective on a major thoroughfare. Unfortunately, there's a grass hut-filled, open air Tiki bar conspicuously located right next to the main road Fisher is barreling down. It's almost as if the screenwriter consulted a random encounter table for car chases.

Rating: 3/10