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12 Rounds

Movie Grade: D

DVD Features Grade: F

Overall Grade: D-

Life can be cruel sometimes. These cruelties while tragic, create some of the most profound questions in the universe; why do bad things happen to good people, but more so, why did I have to watch 12 Rounds twice in one lifetime? I must have done something terrible in a past life to deserve this. Watching it for a second time did grant me some assurance that this was in fact one of the worst movies ever though. I guess that could be seen as a positive.

So Danny Fisher (John Cena) is still a generic character after all these months since his theatrical release. His girlfriend Molly (Ashley Scott) gets kidnapped by incredibly unthreatening international terrorist Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen) and his ridiculously fake accent. Now it's up to Fisher to endanger as many civilians as possible while jumping through Miles' hoops to save a select few people and Molly in particular.

From the second the DVD begins to play it is just filled with disappointment by starting off with the Wolverine trailer. 12 Rounds might have been awful but Wolverine had me in anticipation for three useless years. Once the menu comes up we get the choice between theatrical and unrated versions which don't seem to have much of a difference. There might have been slightly more violence or something in the unrated version, but it doesn't matter which you choose because it will leave a void in your soul all the same.

To take a step down from my outrage the movie serves a purpose, just nothing close to what it set out to. Instead of being a nonstop action rollercoaster with thrills and kills, it's just a sad attempt at a film and therefore hilarious. I gathered a group of friends to suffer with me and we did have a good time pulling out the MST3K style mockery. Anyone who gets that should be crossing there fingers that the guys at Rifftrax will take advantage of this one and anyone that doesn't get this obviously has too much of a social life to care.

A Crash Course: John Cena Stunts is the perfect special feature for this DVD because it actually starts with the line, "Every stunt you can think of is in our movie 12 Rounds." Why not just say it outright, "We didn't think of anything in this movie." This feature was more disappointing than the actual film though because I was hoping to see John Cena in some sort of pain and it just never happened. Does that make me a bad person? Probably.

The DVD also has a gag reel with a title that could actually make me gag, the Never-Before-Cena Gag Reel. Really guys? Really? Come on. Was it really necessary to break out the super-puns?

Getting past that, a gag reel is usually pretty promising, but not this one. There weren't any real gags. It was just actors and the crew talking about how much fun that they had on set and how they become like a family. It isn't a bad feature, just titled very poorly. It would have probably been a better feature to accompany a movie that wasn't, you know, horrendous.

Now we've come to the most advertised feature on the DVD. Every commercial for it has advertised the two separate alternate endings. Even considering how much I hated the film in theaters, alternate endings are always an interesting feature to see how they could have had things come to a close. The problem is that all three ending options were ultimately the same. The only thing that changed was the person that Danny and Molly encounter after the helicopter crash. In the theatrical they see a couple by a pool and in one alternative ending it is the same two people with a line tagged on or a security guard.

To sum it all up, 12 Rounds in the theater or on DVD is just a bundle of disappointment. You'll see what's behind ever turn in the film and that isn't including the times when what's going on is entirely generic. John Cena's acting hasn't changed at all since The Marine and for people who haven't seen that its as bad as you would assume it is. There really isn't any reason for this film to exist other than to give ten year old boys a movie they'll love and learn to hate as they get older.

Movie Grade: D

DVD Features Grade: F

Overall Grade: D-