12 Rounds feels as if it was Harlin's Die Hard 3. The story is almost the same as in John McTiernan's action sequel: detective Danny Fisher (WWE Champion John Cena) makes a crime lord Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen) angry and he creates Danny a 12-step-game he must solve in a given time frame. If he does not manage, Miles will kill his kidnapped girlfriend Molly (Ashley Scott).
Danny is not given much time to think and he must act constantly. If 21 Rounds does not give much time for the lead actor to breathe, it does not do that even to the viewer. The action is very fast, and it keeps the adrenaline levels high up. Sometimes this works, but in this case not.
I personally was burdened with the Die Hard 3-load - addidentally seen it on blu-ray the night before seeing 12 Rounds in theatre. I did not know the synopsis of 12 Rounds beforehand, and it stroke me by surprise how similar these two stories were. And how different in the way they were composed: Die Hard 3 has a lot of breathtaking action but the action is compensated with the witty, dark humour Bruce Willis is so capable of, and that makes it such a great entertainment for action lovers. In 12 Rounds the humour is all gone and the action and the story overall are trying to be so very serious that it gets boring in the end.
Harlin is using a lot what seems like a hand held camera and really fast cuts. Normally the shaking camera does not bother me (I had no problems in watching Cloverfield for example), but in this case I was having serious trouble in being able to actually watch the movie because of the fast movement.No matter how much I wanted to like this movie, no matter that Harlin was again using his trademark of showing something Finnish in his movies, no matter how much I love action movies... I did not like 12 Rounds and unfortunately it made it's way to the worst movie experience of this year in my list so far. I'm sorry fellow Finn Harlin.
Directed by Renny Harlin
Written by Daniel Kunka
Cast John Cena, Aidan Gillen, Ashley Scott, Steve Harris
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1160368/
3 comments:
Damn, I REALLY want to like this movie but after reading this I'm afraid to see it ;O) I'm an old wrestling fan and like many of Harlin's movies so I was really looking forward to seeing this! Maybe I'll just wait for the dvd...
Well, like I said, I had the burden of Die Hard 3 previous day on my shoulders and that may have affected my judgment. One of my friends considered this a decent piece of action so I'd like you to judge by yourself :)
No wrestling is seen in the movie even though Cena is the lead so you should not count on that.
Same thing here. Huge disappointment, even though I was so hoping to be happily suprised :-( I also wrote about this movie in Episodi Magazine, I just noticed you had texted me about it. Thanks, I am happy I had the chance to do it ;-)
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