Blu-ray Review: 12 Rounds -- Extreme Cut (2009)

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Life After Film School:
12 Rounds Podcast With John Cena

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Unfortunately, this week in the attempt to become more "pop culturally" aware, I promised my brother I'd watch something relating to his new UFC obsession, involving the extreme sport that I'm only familiar with from seeing Jon Favreau mindlessly attempt it on TV's Friends. However, the last time I watched anything having to do with wrestling aside from a certain film with Mickey Rourke was when it was the only way I could stop a group of neighborhood boys from screaming as an in-over-my-head teen babysitter.

Although admittedly I never quite got the appeal of the overly theatrical sport that didn't seem to have the same sort of rules or discipline of boxing or kick-boxing, ever since the man formerly known as The Rock who now goes by Dwayne Johnson became a major movie star, it's been fascinating to see other WWE stars make the jump to feature films.

On the surface, one would think that wrestlers would definitely have an advantage for acting over your average ball player, golfer, or figure skater with regard to amateur acting. Since what they do depends on their charisma and interplay they have with the audience, wrestlers may find the switch easier.

However, the mediums are so different and film work is much less broad so that emoting well and striking just the right chord to sell a scene as an actual character proves to be a challenge for those who aren't supposed to let us into their internal world in the ring. And it's this challenge that Johnson initially struggled with but has finally mastered in his most recent films such as the delightful Disney father/daughter charmer The Game Plan and with a spirited turn in Get Smart opposite Steve Carrell and Anne Hathaway.

Totally unfamiliar with John Cena the wrestler, a few years back I did check out The Marine when looking for a mindless action flick. And although it was a bit hokey and you could tell even without any research that it was his first feature, he had a definite appeal and boy-scout like ambition to just go-for-it that made us root for him.

And it's this drive to push himself further to entertain and surpass what he's done that has only increased in the three years that followed for the release of his second and far superior film, 12 Rounds from the renowned action director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea).

Although as an actor, Cena still could use some work and perhaps a good coach when it comes to his more delicate and emotional scenes. Despite this, he's improved from The Marine and this time, in surrounding himself with the best and the brightest-- John Cena has starred in the second sleeper "man on a mission to get his girl back" action movie of '09 so far.



And incidentally I first saw the trailer for 12 Rounds while at the press screening of the other one in Taken. Admittedly, 12 Rounds is the B-movie since it's missing the brains of the A-movie Taken as well as the dynamite turn by Liam Neeson as well as an innovative approach in exploring the seediest side of Paris imaginable by way of dealing with an issue of international and timely significance. Yet, like its 20th Century Fox brother, Rounds, which was relegated to Fox Atomic and WWE for its production, knows it's an Arnold Schwarzenegger Commando-esque modeled formula picture given a zany Riddler style time limit gimmick twist.

Moreover, the fact that Rounds comes from Fox couldn't be more fitting. Essentially, 12 Rounds is a one-man version of the studio's superior Die Hard series combined with Speed throughout its running time and whereas Rounds director Harlin helmed Die Hard 2, Speed director Jan De Bont had been the cinematographer on Die Hard 1 so that all of its influences are tied together with Fox.

While it's not on the level of those pictures-- Rounds is a wholly successful popcorn movie that consistently tops itself as it finds Detective Danny Fisher (Cena) unwillingly pulled into twelve rounds of a game when his girlfriend (Ashley Scott) is kidnapped by a vengeance seeking Irish terrorist played the deliciously wicked Aidan Gillen.



As long as you don't think too hard about the gaps in logic and just how much pre-planning would've had to go into something so ridiculously elaborate-- it's easy to get lured along with Fisher as he races from one round to the next in a series of increasingly dangerous and bizarre New Orleans set challenges to make it by the sound of the bell.



Obviously since he's the puppet, Fisher doesn't realize that the man pulling the strings may have a grander scheme in the works that's larger than simply making him run from Point A to Point B. And when this begins to sink in as the movie careens towards its conclusion, the presentation of the mastermind's plan is deduced with illogical, rapid and far too much convenience as a sort of uneven "well, here's how we're going to justify three acts of insanity" succinct discussion. Yet in retrospect, it works in its own brainless right as yet another justification for an even bigger act of insanity in the inevitable showdown.

When you couple complaints with lingering questions like, "well, how on Earth would he know that it would take..." you're left with plot-holes bigger than the fire trucks, streetcars and helicopters used throughout the movie, which most could use to shred it to pieces, let alone annoy the chess fans who will dislike the way it tries to aspire to the villain's chess-like precision in his battles. However, if you watch the movie in this manner, you'll miss out on what is one extraordinary live-action feast for thrill-junkies.



And despite the fact that we live in an era of too much CGI and easily touched up green-screen effects, the Fox perfected Blu-ray for 12 Rounds is proof that-- as my mom is fond of saying-- "when done right, sometimes the bonus features can be just as good if not better than the movie."



Featuring two versions of the film including the PG-13 theatrical take that nicely doesn't revel in the same carnage that the Die Hard films did as well as the unrated extreme cut-- the Blu-ray also boasts two alternate endings, commentary by Harlin, Cena and screenwriter Kunka. But the most dynamic extras are the overwhelming amount of behind-the-scenes featurettes that break down the action including some of the most dangerous stunts that amazingly were all done with Cena... and a few stuntmen here and there.



While most new releases feel padded with typical press kit extras where the actors all talk about the movie as though they're making Gone With the Wind or Citizen Kane and praise each other as the next Cary Grant or Audrey Hepburn, every single extra included in 12 Rounds was completely riveting as a film fan who's growing weary of the endless amounts of CGI in movies.

Moreover, the extras made me that much more willing to put up with some of the film's imperfections whether they were found in the structural stage or in Cena's struggles to hold his own opposite Gillen--all for the sake of one truly entertaining, switch-off-the-brain Blu-ray version of a theme park ride where it rattles up the hill fueled by steel, guts, and mechanics only to drop you with real effects as opposed to clicks of a mouse.

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Blu-ray Review: Strange Wilderness (2008)

Now Available on Blu-ray

Also Available on DVD

You have to be a fan of actor Steve Zahn to be able to appreciate the loony mayhem that is director Fred Wolf’s Strange Wilderness. Fortunately, this is one prerequisite that I’ve aced ever since I witnessed my fellow Minnesota native initially playing the sweet, closeted Reality Bites character amidst a terrific ensemble of actors in Ben Stiller’s directorial work.

Balancing out blockbusters with indie films, he followed this up with more great little-seen turns over the years (Safe Men, Happy, Texas), but it wasn't until he finally stole the spotlight away from such larger-than-life celebrity presences as Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, and Don Cheadle, first in Hanks’ underrated, sunny ‘60s feel-great musical comedy That Thing You Do! before he brought a bizarre mixture of humor and pathos to his small time hoodlum turn in Steven Soderbergh’s brilliant Out of Sight that people started to pay attention in a bigger way.

Although unfortunately, despite some truly memorable and instantly quotable laugh-out-loud moments in this film penned by Fred Wolf and Peter Gaulke that finds Zahn starring as the inept son who’s inherited his deceased Jack Hanna-like father’s nature television series, Strange Wilderness loses its way shortly after the characters hit the road in a series of escalating, tired, gross out, and cliched “outsiders on a journey” gags.

And despite the fact that only a third of the way into the roughly 90 minute movie, most viewers will feel like channel flipping as though they've stumbled onto the movie on television and moreover feel the strange sense they’ve seen it all before in countless other Happy Madison productions from executive producer Adam Sandler-- the main reason that the film succeeds at all (in the precious few times that it does) and what kept me watching for its entire running time was none other than Steve Zahn.

Coming right off of an impressive dramatic portrayal in Werner Herzog’s acclaimed Vietnam-set biopic Rescue Dawn co-starring Christian Bale, Zahn is instantly believable in familiar comedy mode as the fictitious version of Peter Gaulke.

The ill-prepared host of the now laughably awful series a three a.m. time slot-- Gaulke’s show is just weeks away from justifiable and long overdue cancellation by network executive Jeff Garlin. So in one last ditch attempt to bring back the viewers and make his father proud, Zahn leads his group of even more clueless staffers (including Allen Covert, Jonah Hill and Justin Long) on a journey to find Bigfoot by traveling down into central America.

Of course, we know they're completely unprepared for the dangers that face them given the group's prior tendency to prep for shows with voice-overs written on bar napkins, nonsensical and erroneous “facts” and pseudo-intellectual observations like “it is estimated that the faster a shark swims, the more distance he covers in a given period of time,” and enlisting crew members to don animal costumes to horrific results. And sure enough, it isn’t long before they’re flat broke and find themselves truly trying to survive in some very “strange” wilderness indeed.

A few years following the success of the movie’s origins as comedic shorts from Wolf and Gaulke via an independently produced series of short video “parodies of wildlife shows… which [were] eventually [aired] on Comedy Central,” former Saturday Night Live writers, stand-up comics and TV writers Gaulke and Wolf decided to turn that idea into a feature length work.

Kick-starting their ambition to see it as a movie by crafting their own version of it on video for potential financiers-- Wolf acknowledges that time and again they encountered “a lot of people interested in making it into a TV show… until Adam Sandler and his producing partner Jack Giarraputo read the script.”

With the blessing of Happy Madison Productions and Sandler’s name enabling them to attract some top-notch talent including Ernest Borgnine (in an inspired casting decision made after seeing him on SpongeBob SquarePants), soon the film was set into motion. And while one can’t argue with some of the incredible performers involved like the always-welcome Justin Long as the perpetually stoned, creepily tattooed new crew member and fun cameos with Robert Patrick and Joe Don Baker—- not to long after the movie's incredibly addictive and wholly original set-up-- the film's tone is destroyed by excess.

Namely in unsuccessfully trying to juggle so many different characters (including a bizarre and overdone turn by Jonah Hill that grates on the nerves within seconds) and an increasing over-reliance on disgusting sight gags-- soon the great premise about the dim-witted host is left by the wayside in lieu of sequences involving animals attacking our lead in the privates and-- I'm not kidding-- an entire conversation centering on the fact that a character's name is Dick.

And overall, Wilderness is a movie that holds our interest for the first portion as we see some of the characters in action creating what has to be the worst animal show ever captured on film-- making the screenwriters’ initial feedback that it would’ve probably worked best as a television show seem especially true in hindsight.

With a great deal of enthusiasm, the actors all try their hardest but sadly, there’s not much to like about a film that alienates more viewers with each successive scene that goes for laughs in the crudest possible manner, forgetting just what made the first act so damn funny to begin with.

Typically for the format, the Blu-ray quality of the 2008 work is quite impressive given the stellar sound and heightened depth perception, however since it was purposely filmed to visually hearken back to 1970s wildlife shows, it’s not a great improvement over the DVD so those who already own it may want to skip the upgrade.

Containing some extra features that relish in the repulsion of the infamous “turkey scene,” Jonah Hill’s bizarre Eddie Vedder modeled song performed alongside Justin Long, a veritable press kit extra on the film just added onto the disc and deleted scenes—the sole standout that shows exactly what the cast is capable of is titled “What Do We Do?” which finds Zahn, Long, Hill, Covert, and Borgnine all riffing in a hilarious exchange about Jack Nicholson, Nell Carter, and others.

As they improvise and challenge one another to be funnier, you can sense Long’s polite discomfort as he apologetically blames his crude outbursts on his character rather than himself (while seated next to the legendary Borgnine) but it’s a great example of just putting a bunch of creative and comically gifted people in a room together and letting them rip.

Likewise, it’s a terrific indication that—instead of the gross-out gags and over-the-top effects-- if Gaulke and Wolf would’ve done more scenes like the one featured in this extra over the course of the film, perhaps they’d be sitting with a much more successful and far less formulaic Happy Madison Production that’s memorable for something other than just simply marveling at the next ridiculous nature observation to be uttered by Zahn’s host.