Legendary

LEGENDARY

** SPOILERS **

I've been rough on WWE Studios in the past. It's been all in good fun. Well, not for me. Sitting through these movies hasn't been fun. Legendary is meant to be a departure from WWE Studios' past fare. With Legendary, WWE Studios attempts to leave behind their legacy of B-grade action films starring their WWE Superstars. Instead they've shifted gears into C-grade dramas where fine, distinguished actors hope to carry a WWE Superstar to a good movie, as in the proverbial way Ric Flair could wrestle a broomstick and carry it to a great match.  In Legendary, the fine, distinguished actor is Patricia Clarkson, who is also in real life a very sweet, classy lady who lives in the same building as one of my best friends.  The broomstick, proverbially of course, is John Cena, who, to his credit, tries very, very hard and very, very earnestly as a dramatic actor. Cena doesn't embarrass himself or The Nexus. Cena plays the eldest son of Clarkson and the older brother of scrawny, mop-headed beanpole Devon Graye. Graye wants to be an amateur wrestler like Cena and their dad before them. So what's stopping him? Well, confidence issues, the kind only having his jacked up, jarhead of an older brother can solve.  It takes 45 minutes - scene after scene of molasses-like plot movement, including my favorite, where Graye lies to a judge in court to keep the troubled Cena out of prison after a bar fight  - before Cena finally trains Graye and imparts all of the secret wisdom of how to roll around a sweaty mat with a sweaty guy while wearing a singlet and earmuffs. Along the way, family secrets are revealed, there's some yellin' and hollerin', tears are shed, and there's a Big Match at the end. Also, Danny Glover pops in periodically to narrate, fish for catfish, and spout truth-isms and down-home-isms about life in Oklahoma (New Orleans doubles for Sooner country, but Glover does explain where the term "Sooner" came from.) He's not too old for this shit, but he is much better than this shit. Legendary looks and plays like a TV movie of the week on basic cable, but with all the solemnity of a funeral for someone you don't even like. The performance by Madeleine Martin, who plays the love interest for Graye, is appalling throughout. She's terrible! In the scene they share together where Martin prepares for a school dance with Graye, Clarkson must have utilized every ounce of her skill and control not to want to strangle this girl or stomp a mudhole in her ass and walk it dry. If Cena had just strangled Martin with his STFU submission hold, it would have at least given Legendary the stand up and cheer moment it was reaching for at its conclusion.

The Marine 2 (**)

THE MARINE 2

I imagine if you've never seen an action movie before - or any movie before, period - The Marine 2 must be pretty awesome for you.  Taking over the WWE Films "franchise" from John Cena, Ted DiBiase stars as The Marine 2. His name is Joe, but I lost count of how many times he was called "the Marine" in the movie, although to be fair, he was also called "the American" a lot by the Southeast Asian terrorist heavies. The Marine 2 starts off with the Marine 2 on a mission that goes sideways, which leads to an innocent little Asian boy getting killed before his very eyes. This put the Marine 2 in a really lousy mood when his wife invites him to fly to an island resort in Southeast Asia with her. That resort is promptly taken over by the aforementioned Southeast Asian terrorists lead by Temura Morrison (Jango Fett from the Star Wars prequels).  When all of the partygoers and his wife are taken hostage, well, this looks like a job for a Marine. 2.  DiBiase is asked to do precious little acting as the Marine 2 and he's up to the task.  The movie even drops an in-joke about how monosyllabic DiBiase is ("Does he ever talk?")  The Marine 2 also goes out of its way to not name exactly what Southeast Asian countries the action takes place in, and the movie's presentation of international politics was written with the average WWE fans' grasp of such in mind. The Asians in the movie even prefer to speak to each other in broken Engrish than in their native language. Action-wise, The Marine 2 is mainly a riff on Commando and similar movies from the 80's, though DiBiase has a moment where he breaks his wrist to get out of shackles that was both cool and gross.  According to Wikipedia, The Marine 2 was "inspired by true events" (snicker), and Randy Orton was supposed to play the Marine 2 but couldn't because of a broken collarbone. Orton was dishonorably discharged from the Marines in real life before becoming a pro-wrestler, so that would have been hilariously inappropriate.

12 Rounds (**)

12 ROUNDS

In 12 Rounds, John Cena plays John Cena, a "freakishly large" New Orleans beat cop who manages to capture the world's most super duper master criminal, played by Aiden Gillen. After breaking out of prison, Gillen returns to the Big Easy and takes revenge on Cena in the most ludicrous manner possible: He kidnaps Cena's girl (Ashley Scott, The Rock's love interest in Walking Tall, who seems to be making a career out of being the WWE Films moll) and forces Cena into a game of 12 Rounds, where Cena has to perform stunts across the city causing untold millions of dollars in property damage. 12 Rounds started out pretty decent, but watching Cena race across New Orleans grew tedious even before the signature action set piece where he stops a runaway trolley from exploding. Later, Scott reveals a previously unmentioned skill as a helicopter pilot and, when Cena leaps onto the skids to save her from Gillen, she decides to take the chopper on a joy ride across the city while her boyfriend gives Gillen an attitude adjustment instead of just landing the chopper. (Thank goodness for convenient hotel pools on rooftops.) The monosyllabic Cena shows little of whatever it is about him that's so captivating to 11 year old WWE fans and 15 year old girls. Cena maintains his wrestling character's invulnerability in the movie, such as when a house explosion blows him across the street into a parked car and he gets back up and brushes himself off. Gillen, so good as Mayor Tommy Carcetti in The Wire, apparently had the help of Macauley Culkin from Home Alone in rigging New Orleans into a deadly obstacle course. The only character who actually has an arc is the black FBI agent who didn't care if Cena's girl lived or died as long as he caught Gillen, but had a change of heart and joined the Chain Gang by the end. 12 Rounds is directed by Renny Harlin, who was once an A-list action director but has fallen on such hard times he now has a movie executive produced by Vince McMahon to his credit.

The Condemned (**1/2)

THE CONDEMNED

Stone Cold! Stone Cold! Stone Cold!

Jim Ross claims he saw The Condemned three times in the theatre. If that's true then by God, that ol' Okie must be in love with his good friend Stone Cold Steve Austin. It's a shame then that even Good Ol' J.R.'s repeat business didn't stop The Condemned from becoming the lowest grossing WWE Film at the box office. The Condemned's failure sank the fledgling WWE film division and relegated any future WWE productions to go straight to DVD. Thing is, The Condemned is the best of the WWE Films. That isn't saying much; See No Evil and The Marine are pretty shitty, but The Condemned is surprisingly watchable and enjoyable as a pure action B movie.

By now, after seemingly thousands of commercials, every WWE fan knows the basic plot of The Condemned: On a remote island, ten death row inmates, eight men and two women, all killers, are forced to fight to the death. The sole survivor wins his freedom. The entire sordid affair is broadcast as "www.the_condemned.com" live over the Internet for profit by Breck, a slimey producer out to exploit the "reality" of people killing each other for a fortune in pay per view Internet dollars. On the surface Breck is a stand in for Vince McMahon, but he didn't father a bastard leprechaun, and he's as much a commentary on someone like Girls Gone Wild maven Joe Francis and sleazy network producers as he is a riff on the beloved Chairman of WWE.

The first thing I found interesting was that the burden of carrying the movie doesn't fall on the shoulders of Stone Cold Steve Austin, which is the fatal mistake The Marine did with John Cena and See No Evil did with Kane. Austin ostensibly plays the lead role but the movie takes a minimalist approach to how much Austin is on the screen. He pretty much appears only when he's needed and spends a considerable amount of time off screen. Austin wisely doesn't try to do or say too much and doesn't veer very far at all from his bad ass wrestling persona. Even when he manages to call his girlfriend back in the States to tell her he's still alive, he keeps the mushy stuff to a bare minimum. 

The filmmakers make every moment Austin appears on the screen count. Stone Cold's performance isn't stunning by any means, but as the default hero of the story he's pretty solid. (Still, I think I'd have preferred seeing the heel Stone Cold of 2001 who liked singalongs, needed hugs from Vince McMahon, and was terrified of eating his wife's cookies. Maybe if there's a sequel...) The main thrust of the action on the island is handled by Vinne Jones, who plays a damn good heel, especially when he's not wearing a fake muscle suit, a toilet bowl on his head, and screaming, "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!"

Meanwhile, Breck is the center of all of the drama regarding the ethics and morality of broadcasting the deaths and even rapes happening on the island. A couple of Breck's crew members, including his hot girlfriend, actually have a conscience and attempt to put a stop to what they're doing, while the rest of his crew are as amoral as their employer. The movie even point blank accuses the audience (our culture at large) of being the problem for watching the_condemned.com and considering watching people die entertainment. The moralizing is heavy handed and as blunt as a steel chairshot to the head. But fuck, I was pretty surprised it was there at all. The movie's ethical position plays full force when Stone Cold and Vinnie Jones force the tables to be turned on Breck and his crew and they're forced to pay the piper for the roles they played on the show.

The action isn't filmed with any great panache but the filmmakers wisely kept the fighting realistic. It's a pretty fucking violent movie with people getting shot, stabbed, beaten, run through with arrows, and exploding. Probably half of the "condemned" die by explosion. If you want to see people get blown up real good, this is the DVD for you. When one of the "condemned" is raped by Jones and his little Japanese sidekick, the movie wisely doesn't show it but makes its occurence the lynchpin for moral outrage. The breakdowns of when the condemned attack each other, what they're after, and when and why some of them forge alliances were well thought out. Again, there's a level of thought in design and competency of execution on display in The Condemned that was unexpected and commendable. Especially from a movie bearing the credit "Executive Producer Vince McMahon."

While I don't need to see The Condemned ever again, I had fun and I'm not sorry I saw it, which I can't say for Cena or Kane's movies. And that's a big get. Although whoever picked the song that closes the movie needs to take a Stone Cold Stunner and a beer bath. When I think of the music to represent the Texas Rattlesnake, the Bionic Redneck, the Toughest SOB in WWE, I don't think Nickelback.