12 Rounds

John Cena, the athletic and stuntman former wrestler is trying to go the way of the Rock and carve himself a niche in Hollywood feature films. The Rock may be politically naive, he is OK with politicians allowing child molestors living in our neighborhoods for instance, but he is a little more charismatic and his characters have a little more depth to them. Cena is rigid without having the botox face of Meg Ryan. Det. Danny Fisher is Cena's character's name in this latest action packed twist.

This movie is not that far from Cena's last explosion filled movie called The Marine. His hot blonde wife was kidnapped in that one. We just have to trade Kelly Carlson for Ashley Scott, which is almost fair. Carlson is off the chart and Scott is pretty close to that level.

Brian J. White is a black actor who is strong in his own right and is Fisher's partner. He has played in many movies whereas Cena has mostly sliced a spot for himself in the wrestling world. Though which activity requires more acting is debatable.

Steve Harris is Special Agent George Aiken and is sometimes on Fisher's side and others times it seems they are at odds. Sometimes physically. Aiken also has a turbulent relationship with his own partner. It certainly is not healthy.

Fisher performs a miraculous act of tracking down an international thief, extortionist, terrorist, and arms dealer and capturing him with his strength and muscle. In the process, Aidan Gillen who plays this psychotic but confident villian Miles Jackson, his gorgeous girlfriend is smashed by an oncoming truck. It was her fault for shooting and fleeing from the police and Jackson's fault for urging her to do so. But Jackson blames Fisher and sets his sights on his revenge. His revenge is beyond elaborate, completely fiction, but entertaining nevertheless. Many people die throughout this diabolical process, including, but not limited to, the plumber.

The movie takes place in New Orleans and there is an extravagant trolly car episode. Cars and debri are flying every where. The sound affects are in line with this production. There are some humorous scenes. Cene is not Robert de Niro but know one expects him to be. This movie does have some storyline from Speed. The trolly car scene which I just mentioned, it was rigged by Jackson like Hopper's character did something similiar to the bus in Speed. The way Jackson forced Fisher to jump through hoops and hurdles while he thought he was making a simple access and getaway with millions of dollars in cash. Hence 12 Rounds, Fisher had to surpass 12 designated, violent, and formidable rounds that Jackson wrote for him. Keanu Reeves's character upset Hopper's character and Hopper designed an elaborate scheme to terrorize and possibly eliminate Reeves forever. Not that much different accept more machines were used, a pretty girl, but the acting was weaker than what Speed presented us with, a long with the writing. I have to admit, the ending of Speed with the subway train was disappointing. Hopper's character just tried to do to much, he was too slow and old to match Reeve and other trailing police that would have been on the trail despite the movie not showing this.

Too bad Fisher's best friend dies in this movie. The acting here was nothing worth bragging about. Lots of action, it was fun but ofcourse predictable. Jackson did provide us with a cool method of steeling money by using water and the pressure from a fire engine to extract money. This scene here was similiar to Die Hard III, causing mayhem all over a city to distract people away from a large central source of currency. 12 Rounds had the cash, the loot and objective in Die Hard III was mounds of gold.

The movie had the action, was not boring, nor too short, had the pretty girl. They did some things right.

I allocate this movie 2 stars.***