12 Rounds 3: Lockdown (2015)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Blistering performances.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

A police officer returns to duty after recovering from a gun shot wound to discover incriminating evidence of illegal activities against those closest to him. He quickly finds himself trapped inside his own precinct, hunted and in search of the truth, as the crooked cops stop at nothing to recover the evidence......John Cena and WWE have a lot to answer for. Between the two of them, they have taken two perfectly passable B-movie action flicks, and turned them into a monster that won't give up the Die Hard ghost.The sequels to The Marine, are nothing more than Die Hard wannabe shlockfests, and in turn, this franchise is becoming the same monster.But what's the twist here? Why, the twelve rounds are referring to the number of bullets that Dean Ambrose has in his gun. Because a good cop doesn't need more than twelve bullets in a Die Hard situation......eat that Bruce.And what does become clear very soon into the film, is that this movie wasn't supposed to be a sequel, the makers just saw the finished product, felt their heart sink, and tagged on the franchise name.The plot and the narrative, are perfectly acceptable and a pretty good concept, Cop comes back to work after being traumatised, colleagues are planning a robbery, blame their killing of other cops on the returning cops mental health state, thus leaving him with having to clear his name and quip really poor, incoherent one liners.It's not a terrible film by any means, it's just so boring and mundane, and Ambrose should make the most of this movie, because I feel he won't be getting many more movie offers soon. At least he's got his wrestling to fall back on.So for the rest of the film we have Ambrose hiding from a villain who is really doing his best to be Michael Jai White and killing cops when Ambrose won't move into the view of the CCTV, the bloke from Scary Movie looking really old and sweaty, and obviously your token police outside shouting 'we're going in'.It all ends with a silly twist, and it doesn't deliver anything new or surprising.Well it did surprise me when I found out Ambrose is only 29. He looks well into his forties.Live Hard.....Die Hard......

My quick rating - 5,2/10. Another slightly above average action movie starring a WWE superstar, this time Dean Ambrose. I will say that using him for the main was a good call since he isn't the muscle bound type character such as Cena and Orton were in the previous films. For being his first acting role, he did an adequate job and delivered his one- liners pretty well (yet some were not that funny no matter who said them) The action was edited well so the viewers don't lose track with too much jerky camera work (which seems to be more the norm in action films as of late). This story is more a use of "12 rounds" as in shots left in the gun, not 12 rounds as in a cat and mouse game, but that is OK, at least it was different. Overall, a good addition to the WWE library that did not raise the bar at all, but also did not lower it in the slightest either. Funny thing, I went back to my database and I gave the first one a 5.3 and the second one a 5.1 so at least they are being consistent.

I am not sure if this movie ever was in theaters, but it seems like the kind of thing that would be straight to DVD, or perhaps cable TV. I wouldn't say there was a complete lack of effort in making this movie, but for the most part it's predictable and not very good. But the movie does try to take itself seriously, and it's almost laughable at times. For instance, I think the actors probably had trouble keeping a straight face when saying some of their lines - the typical action movie tough guy lines from all those bad 80's movies. I did still manage to finish watching the movie; it wasn't awful and if you just want some mindless action, it's doable. I think where it falls short especially though is in terms of the plot. It appeared to me the plot was mostly just there for convenience to string together the action sequences that make up the core of the movie - not a lot of plot development or much change in setting. Some of the action was pretty satisfying, but it mostly looked staged and unrealistic, like sprays of bullets that constantly miss their target. I noticed when watching this, several of the make actors looked like they had raging hangovers, I imagine they were getting hammered in the evenings and not taking their work too seriously. I think the ratings for this movie will drop over time.

The first anomaly comes from the title, it doesn't mean a gauntlet of chores the villain has set up for protagonist anymore. Instead it displays the rounds our hero has, but considering he can loot other weapon and decides not to for integrity of the title feels rather limiting. Fortunately, Jonathan Good (Dean Ambrose) channels his inner John McClaine surprisingly well and Roger Cross as the antagonist has the aura of TV show bad guy.This is what you'd expect from action flick, the usual dirty cop and the rouge hero trapped in an unfortunate situation. It borrows heavily from Die Hard and perhaps because it's an already proved formula, Lockdown is not entirely bad. Dead Ambrose is not the usual protagonist, he looks genuinely troubled which serendipitously may help his rogue cop character.There's a few of illogical events are put there for the sake of pushing the plot, and adds that to the occasional odd alternate way of dispatching enemies, it can be awkward. A couple of bad CG makes the movie slightly unintentionally funny at times.However, it's still a passable action shoot'em up. The change from complex mind games to simple gunslinger and melee action is good decision since the franchise doesn't have the refined production to pull off such cerebral setting.Lockdown is definitely flawed, yet it brings enough action antics to be a popcorn flick or lazy afternoon watch.