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Movie:		3.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		6.0
Extras:		6.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	Renny Harlin
Writer(s):	Daniel Kunka
Starring:	Ashley Scott • Steve Harris • John Cena • Aidan Gillen • Brian J. White
Genre:	Action
Release Date:	June 30, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	Blu-ray - $25.99
Amazon:

12 Rounds is either one of the best tributes to action films of the last two decades or a horrible rip-off with nothing unique to say or show – it’s a genuine toss-up. But even if you can’t decide whether or not 12 Rounds borrows too much or the right amount, one thing isn’t debatable: John Cena has no place acting. The movie itself has problems left and right, but what’s really proven by the time credits roll is that action stars don’t just require muscular bodies in tear-away shirts, some acting is required. Bruce Willis didn’t rock our faces off in Die Hard by just being tough as nails – no, instead he threw in some acting to make John McClane endearing and even funny.

Detective Danny Fisher (Cena) and his partner Hank Carver (Brian J. White) took down the wrong criminal on the wrong night, a happenstance which would come back to haunt Fisher a year later. Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen) had a knack for popping on and off of the FBI’s radar with heists in cities around the world; when he pops up in Louisiana, Special Agent Aiken (Steve Harris) attempts to trap him only to have the plan go awry – landing Jackson in the laps of Carver and Fisher. In bringing Miles to justice, his girlfriend is killed and his grudge against Fisher takes hold. Fast forward a year later and Miles has escaped from prison and challenges Danny to a match of 12 rounds of death-defying stunts. Plowing through the city in a fire truck, exploding buildings, high-speed trolley chases fill out the list of activities Fisher and his police friends must survive if they want to rescue Danny’s wife alive.

So let’s break it down piece by piece. Challenges that force the hero to race through the city to solve riddles or problems? Die Hard with a Vengeance. Large public transportation device hurtling wildly towards the end of the line with no breaks? Spider-man 2 or even Speed to some extent. The villain killing off a main character in an apartment with a bomb? Speed, again. There is a point where paying homage to action films becomes an absence of originality. What’s really funny about drawing a comparison between 12 Rounds and the third Die Hard film is the name Renny Harlin. Now, Renny directed Die Hard 2 which most will agree is a minor misstep in the franchise. The fact that he’d direct a film with the main plot device of the second Die Hard sequel must say something about him being passed over to direct that film.

Now, in defense of the film, action movies borrow from each other over and over – there’s lots of inbreeding. Movie X borrows from Movie Y, Movie Y from Movie Z which then inspires a sequence in the sequel to Movie X. It’s an unfortunate circle with brief moments of brilliance recognized only to be recycled. 12 Rounds is, like many others in the genre, a recycler of innovative stunt work. The brief moments of success to be found in 12 Rounds are when it makes it very clear which subsection of action junkies it’s attempting to attract. I’d hesitate to call it low-concept, but really the premise behind 12 Rounds is little more than stringing together 12 otherwise unrelated stunts. In short, the people 12 Rounds would claim as fans are the ones who get their kicks from destruction derbies and really big cars; the people who go beyond marveling at fire fighters and police officers as noteworthy civil servants and consider them stalwart examples of human endurance.

You won’t see anything new in 12 Rounds, but it still offers the requisite amount of bangs and booms for the action junkies. The one place where I won’t accommodate 12 Rounds is John Cena. As Hulk Hogan and Dwayne Johnson have proven, there is room for conversion from a career in showboat wrestling to the silver screen. What many wrestlers have failed to realize is that the wrestlers who make the transition successfully are in the minority. Kevin Dunn, Tor Johnson, Stone Cold Steve Austin and countless others have all tried their hands – but none have found the same success as Hogan and Johnson. To be brutally honest, Cena doesn’t deserve it. Hogan may have been cheeseball acting through and through, but when your movie career happens primarily in the 80s and 90s that fits the bill perfectly. Dwayne Johnson gave us The Rundown, an almost inexplicably enjoyable action film; the man has tremendous comedic timing and it helps every film he’s in. John Cena has none of the cheeseball, over-the-top acting nor the wry humor – he took lessons at the Christian Bale acting school and only learned one thing: the deep raspy voice.

The hi-def yields of 12 Rounds makes the film look like a Tony Scott film reject, even with its crisp and grainy take on a beaten down New Orleans. Certain action sequences have a great look with the resolution but for the most part there’s nothing really separating it from a viewing on a DVD transfer. The audio is very typical with nothing about it to really recommend itself in any way negative or positive. Overall the visual and audio presentation is average for a Blu-ray disc.

Blu-ray Bonus Features

While it may be horribly derivative, the movie seems to be deserving of copious behind the scenes exposure if you trust the disc’s featurettes. The generic extras start with two audio commentaries with one starring director Harlin and the other featuring the voices of Cena and writer Daniel Kunka; both are quite irritating as Harlin and Cena independently seem to be under the impression that they achieved something revolutionary with 12 Rounds. Then we have two alternate endings (neither really all that “alternate”) and a gag reel only funny for those wrestling fans who do think Cena has a riveting sense of humor. It isn’t, he doesn’t. The two featurettes with any actual worth explore some of the bigger action sequences of the film. Considering its genre these two are the most anyone could hope for from the extras – so watch these, ignore the rest.