12 Rounds

Imagine a cross between Die Hard 3 and 16 Blocks only without Bruce Willis. Or any other actors you may have heard of before. Add a dash of The Game and a random ex-fake wrestler (the WWE even produced the film), stir in Renny Harlin directing someone other than his ex-wife. Leave to simmer and you have 12 Rounds.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Cop arrests bad guy, but bad buy’s girlfriend dies in freak accident. Bad guy escapes jail and comes back for revenge. Or does he…?

Ok, the plot doesn’t matter crap here. 12 Rounds is about action sequences. Try to justify anything in here with logic and you might as well not bother watching the film. You know, a bit like Die Hard 4.0 only not quite as awful.

John Cena does a decent job of not quite acting, and an excellent job of the stunts. He’s huge, and thankfully there’s not a lot in the way of fistfights because it would take someone the size of an in-shape Arnie to provide any semblance of a fair competition. Don’t expect him to be taking any oscars soon, but he’s definitely got the edge on Hulk Hogan as far as action is concerned.

There’s not a lot else to say about the film, to be honest. Virtually plotless until someone remembered after 90 minutes that they need to tie everything together. It’s all a string of seemingly random stunts and explosions and, you know, that’s fine what what it is.

I can’t figure out whether some of the scenes and lines were subconsciously stolen or are a tribute to the films that 12 Rounds is ripping off. Keep an ear out for the resident bad guy chatting over the phone while on a street car when he “twigs” that the FBI are involved. The whole way he says “F… B… I…” he may as well adopt a Hans Kruber German accent.

Don’t go in expecting the best film ever and you won’t be disappointed. You’ve seen it all before – the basic story, some of the sequences – but they hang together well and it’s not a bad way to spend an hour and a half in a dark room.