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Marine 2 (The)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Andreas Petersen (23rd January 2010). |
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The Film
 In a day and age where it is lame to be patriotic (at least in the circles I run with), I think that a dose of patriotism can be healthy. I’m not the sort of person who has American flags tied to the side of his car, or who actively celebrates the 4th of July, or a person who would even call himself a “patriot” to begin with, but every now and then I get immense joy out of film that just shows Americans kicking ass. There is a certain black-and-white element to ultra-patriotic movies, ones where the Americans are so blatantly good and the other guys are so blatantly bad, that I just love. "Rambo III" (1988), "True Lies" (1994) and "Inglorious Basterds" (2009) come to mind immediately. It is with this reasoning that I was looking forward to "The Marine 2" with interest and a dash of excitement. All I wanted was a marine to brutally kill the bad guys in terrible ways wile shouting “Semper-fi!” Sadly, this isn’t the movie I got, and what I did get, I didn’t like. "The Marine 2" follows the story of Joe Linwood (Ted DiBiase Jr.), a soldier coming back home for a few weeks. Instead of actually coming back to his home, his wife (Lara Cox) is whisked away to some pacific island to plan a party for a self made billionaire who just opened a resort. Joe goes with her, and shortly after the ribbon is cut, a bunch a guys wearing Halloween masks storm the party and take everyone hostage. Joe escapes, but somehow leaves his wife behind. Determined to get back in, he teams up with some mercenaries. I hope I don’t sound like I’m underselling the plot here, but it truly is this simple. I wouldn’t mind the overall blandness of the plot if the film just delivered in any other way. If this film had just been ridiculous nothing but action, I would have been pleased. Sadly, what we get is amazingly simple action sequences that are neither brutal nor gnarly. Joe runs around and shoots people with his gun, sneaks around, shoots another guy, is shot at, runs, rinse, repeat. I swear, I want to contact Roel Reiné, the director, and ship him a copy of "Rambo" (2008) to show him how a soldier gets business done (hint: it should involve a jeep-mounted machine gun). Then of course, everything else about the movie comes off as lazy. It isn’t shot interestingly, with typical sweeping shots of the island, and anything else you can imagine that you’ve already seen before. Reiné never uses the setting to his advantage, never has anyone sneaking through the trees wearing camo, never has anyone rising out of the water to kill someone. The best you get here is Joe hiding under a bridge and stabbing someone when he grabs his foot. It should be noted that somehow not a single drop of blood was released from his body. In terms of gore, this may be the tamest rated "R" movie I have seen in quite some time. "The Marine 2" just fails to deliver in every way it should. I wanted to like the movie, but it didn’t give me any sweet action or the overt patriotism that I needed. Overall the movie is just incredibly boring, with stiff dialogue peppered in with one guy shooting a gun. The problem isn’t the simplicity, just that it was simple in the wrong way.
Video
"The Marine 2" is presented in an inconsistent HD 1080p 24/fps 1.85:1 widescreen transfer mastered in AVC MPEG-4 compression. There are moments where the picture quality is more than suitable, with tropic colors flourishing before my eyes. However, some of the sweeping shots of the island, ones that I suspect are just cheap stock footage, are grainy in a big bad way. It was distracting to the point where some shots were so radically different in quality, that I would get even more disinterested in a movie already boring me to tears. The picture here is half "B" material, and half "D" material.
Audio
"The Marine 2" is offered in an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit, with optional French, Portuguese and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks. The DTS-HD track is suitable enough, never having any pitfalls, but never rocking my speakers either. The problem was that for an action movie, the action was incredibly tame and the film never had a chance to really shine. It’s sort of like a good actor working with a bad script, as I just didn’t think there was really anything there to hear. What was there came through clear, even if the film’s score began to lull me into sleep. Maybe that’s not such a good thing. Optional English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese and Thai subtitles are included.
Extras
"The Marine 2" includes extras in the way of behind-the-scenes featurettes, outtakes, deleted scenes, and a few bonus trailers. All are detailed further below: First up is the featurette "Village Virtuoso: The Final Fight," which runs for 5 minutes and 15 seconds. Here, the location of the film’s finale is dissected as it is inter-cut with talking head interviews. This feature is actually pretty damn interesting, and I was happy to see that at least the people making it were having a good time, even if I wasn’t, as they all came off as genuinely likeable. I appreciated that the featurette took time to examine the culture of the people living in the fishing village that houses the big last fight. "The Last Resort: Inside the Terrorist Siege" featurette, which runs for 3 minutes and 3 seconds, is a feature that offers insight into the first big action sequence of the film. Here, the director takes up most of the time, and pretentiously talks about how location is character and movement is feeling and all sorts of other crap that has no place being mentioned in a special feature for "The Marine 2." "East Meets West: Muay Thai Fight" featurette, which runs for 4 minutes and 44 seconds, outlines the martial arts fight near the film’s end. This goes into how fights are choreographed and the like, which is the sort of stuff I can get into, despite the fact the scene showcased here seemed to come out of nowhere, with characters using guns the entire film suddenly deciding to use some form of kung-fu. Next up is "Production in Paradise: Filming in Thailand" featurette, which runs for 4 minutes and 15 seconds. This feature sadly missed what made Village Virtuoso so engaging, and seems to focus on how amazing the hotel the cast and crew were staying in, rather than the majestic beauty of Thailand itself. "Building a Legacy: Ted’s Story" featurette, which runs for 5 minutes and 5 seconds, is a short biography on the star of the film, looking at his family’s history concerning professional wrestling. This was by far the best feature offered on the disc, and is actually something I was interested in watching. I’m a big fan of wrestling history, and whenever there are wrestling biographies on TV, I have to stop what I’m doing and watch. I was sad that this was as short as it is. "Play by the Roles: Inside the Production" featurette, which runs for 3 minutes and 19 seconds, is a clip focused mainly of the film’s director. Here, actors and producers build him up as some kind of auteur, but really, he just seems like a decent guy. I admire Reiné’s hands-on approach, and there is plenty of footage here showing him getting into the nitty-gritty, not sitting comfortably from his director’s chair. Next up are the "Muay Thai Fight" outtakes, and are comprised of an introduction, the fight from the steadicam perspective and the hand-held perspective. It is the same shot shown over and over, and when it is viewed thusly, it just shows how lame the fight itself was. They include: - Introduction with director Roel Reiné, running for 20 seconds. - "Steadicam Take 1," running for 47 seconds. - "Steadicam Take 2," running for 46 seconds. - "Steadicam Take 3," running for 47 seconds. - "Steadicam Take 4," running for 49 seconds. - "Steadicam Take 5," running for 44 seconds. - "Hand-Held Take 1," running for 42 seconds. - "Hand-Held Take 2," running for 40 seconds. - "Hand-Held Take 3," running for 37 seconds. - "Hand-Held Take 4," running for 39 seconds. Also included are some extended scenes. Overall, these scenes don’t differ much from the finished product in the film, but are interspersed with bits of dialogue that didn’t make the cut. Overall, I felt like I was just watching scenes I have already watched, only now the pacing was even more out of sync. Also, the scenes are unfinished, with time codes on the screen, and the audio sounding abysmal. The scenes are: - "Hotel Tour," which runs for 2 minutes and 4 seconds. - "Church’s Scuba Shack," which runs for 3 minutes and 23 seconds. - "Joe and Church Before the Siege," which runs for 2 minutes and 23 seconds. - "Blondie Sets Bombs in the Laundry Room," which runs for 1 minute and 28 seconds. We also get two deleted scenes, both short, both not adding much more than a tiny bit of sexiness and banter between Joe and Robin. The scenes are much worse nor better than what you’re already getting in the movie, so they fit right in with the tone and pacing as far as I could tell. They are: - "Joe and Robin at the Party," which runs for 1 minute and 17 seconds. - "Joe and Robin at Their Room," which runs for 1 minute and 25 seconds. Another interesting offering here is "Making the Cut" deleted shots montage, which runs for 5 minutes and 47 seconds. Here, director Reiné explains that he grew to like certain shots in the film, but found that they had any place in the final cut. Here, random shots are montaged while backed by music from the film. While I wasn’t too into the deleted shots, I was interested by the concept, and would like to see this happen more often in big releases. Lastly, a few start-up bonus trailers are included, and they are for: - "Jennifer’s Body" which runs for 1 minute and 43 seconds. - "Family Guy: Something Something Something Dark Side" which runs for 1 minute and 10 seconds. - "Gentlemen Broncos" which runs for 2 minutes and 20 seconds. - "Behind Enemy Lines: Columbia" which runs for 1 minute and 4 seconds. - "12 Rounds" which runs for 2 minutes and 23 seconds.
Overall
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