Sunday, November 18, 2007

The Marine



Starring a professional wrestler and the T-1000, The Marine is a terrible movie. But it's one of those terrible movies that transcends its terribleness to become amazing in its own way. It's hard to tell how much of the movie is supposed to be serious and how much is supposed to be silly, because there's a lot of attempted humorous dialogue between the T-1000 and his villainous henchmen, especially Dozer from The Matrix, who has to turn everything into a race issue. He's really an idiotic, psychotic character, who causes 90% of the trouble for the T-1000 in this movie. If he wasn't such a retard, they wouldn't have had to capture John Cena's wife, who I recognize most from an internet picture of her sitting on a bathtub wearing only panties (She's the only witness in the entire film that they don't murder, because she could be useful as a hostage of course); the cops wouldn't be after them; and they wouldn't all end up killed in the end by a former marine.

Yeah, former marine, because after a stellar opening rescue sequence in Iraq full of yelling, bullets, and burning 2x4's, Cena is discharged for disobeying orders. My friend didn't understand why it was called The Marine, since his former career is irrelevant to most of the movie's plot (the word "plot" is used very generously here), but it ended up useful in justifying why he could make such graceful dives into swamp water while buildings he was just in explode for no reason. Seriously, I've never seen so many ridiculous, sometimes inexplicable explosions in one movie before, and most happen right next to characters who always emerge completely unscathed. After a hilarious opening half-hour and before a pretty good third act, they spend too much time wandering around in the wild of South Carolina, trying to be funny while nothing's really happening. Sure, Cena gets jumped by some giant hillbillies, but he kicks their asses in an impromptu wrestling match in short order. As humorous as the movie is, it isn't when it tries to be, and a sigh of relief was to be had when they finally got back to the fighting. Despite killing off the craziest character too soon and having too many stupid jokes, the film does act some smart questions. Since Cena can't take a guy out quickly and quietly for some reason despite being a trained marine, why don't henchman call for help during their bouts with him that always involve lots of splintering wood and loud punches? How many flimsily-constructed buildings can a man holding the side of an 18-wheeler cab be plowed through before he loses his grip? And how many explosive barrels can you really fit inside one shack? If you like movies that are terrible in a hilarious way, you should definitely check out The Marine.

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