The Marine 2 – Blu Ray Review

The Film:

When I popped this movie into my Blu Ray player I had a quick flash of panic. I couldn’t help but think to myself, ‘oh man, I never saw the first one. What if I’m completely lost.’ Well, I was definitely completely lost but trust me, it was not because I had missed the original.  I’m pretty sure this was an old rejected script. Probably one that they had tucked away from when they were looking for a script about a marine to stick John Cena into a few years back. I can just imagine those crafty producers reading this script and thinking ‘nah, this one is too much like Die Hard.’ And the story was actually remarkably similar to Die Hard minus the tension, originality, and acting talent.

I honestly couldn’t tell you one descriptive feature about the main character, Joe, that isn’t superficial. Um….he’s buff, he’s… good at shooting guns, he’s… a marine. Really that’s all we know about him. Almost immediately I didn’t care who he was or why he was doing what he was doing. The general plot is that his wife works in PR or something for this rich American businessman that is opening up a luxury resort in Thailand.  And uh oh, you’ll never guess, terrorists show up. Well good thing there is a marine there. And apparently being a marine gives you borderline super human speed, strength and agility.

There was absolutely no build up, the movie opens with him sniping someone from on top of a building. I don’t really know why, I suppose it was an attempt at a back-story. Then bam, some vague undefined period of time goes by then he and his wife are at the resort. I actually was rooting for the terrorists, not just because I really wanted to see Ted DiBiase get shot in his face, but because the Thai freedom fighters were battling their oppression by the white man and big business. These businessmen had destroyed their culture then had the nerve to claim that they helped them out by giving them jobs and industry, a much more compelling motivation than the marine’s cliché damsel in distress situation.

You may be thinking that I should lighten up because sometimes good action can be predictable, a statement that I whole-heartedly agree with, but not even the action was interesting. The fight scenes were extremely over choreographed, it just all felt so planned. Even the fighting was too predictable often becoming a WWE match complete with all the classic wrestling maneuvers. The more I think about this movie the more I hate it.

The Blu Ray

Ok so I can’t really complain about the video or audio quality, they weren’t above average but definitely not bad. The actual production value of the disc was adequate. Unfortunately, it was as painful to watch the special features, as it was the movie itself so I would not recommend doing it. They include:

Behind the Scenes There are about 25 minutes of behind the scene featurettes that have interviews with Ted DiBiase and director Roel Reine. A lot of it is them talking about how great their vacation to Thailand was and how awesome it was to work with everybody. I know, it sounds riveting right.

Extended Scenes It saddens me to think that as mediocre as this movie was there were scenes that just weren’t good enough. Yikes.

Montage thingy I don’t know what to call this but there is a montage with all sorts of unused footage that didn’t make it into the movie. It’s like watching deleted scenes but with the fun of a montage.

Conclusion: If you’re an action junkie who thinks that this straight to DVD flick featuring your favorite wrestler might be worth checking out then think again. Usually, when I don’t particularly enjoy a movie I can at least say that it has some sort of potential to be a decent movie but in this case it just shouldn’t exist. It may be the worst movie I’ve seen this year.

The Film: Rating:

The Blu-ray:Rating: