12 Rounds (2009)

Undescribable Perfection

Purely Joyful Movie!

Perfect cast and a good story

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Needless to say SPEED (1994) was definitely an inspiration for this movie, to the point that if they'd switch things around just a little bit it could have been a sequel to it.And even though John Cena is better than he usually is in movies, he's just no Keanu (did I say that? Oh yes I did).And Ashley Scott is definitely no Sandra Bullock and furthermore Aidan Gillen no Dennis Hopper.That said, it's not terrible, SPEED (1994) to me is just one of the best blockbuster action movies of the 90's so the chance that it would match up to it would really be second to none.Anyway back to this movie, it's okay fairly mindless popcorn entertainment, Renny Harlin is good when it comes to action-sequences and yet again he delivers on those aspects.I'm usually not bothered to much over shaky cams but this movie contains a overabundance of that and occasionally you wish they would just use steady cam but what can you do? not much.There's really not that much more to talk about the movie, it's not a bad movie we've just seen it before.It's the best movie I've seen with John Cena at least, there is always that.

You can go on enjoying the movie as long as you want. To be honest, it is more action packed than Robocop (2014). John Cena is amazing. He has got what it takes to be future Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone or Bruce Willis.Speaking of Bruce Willis, if you recall the IMDb profile poster of 12 Rounds, you can see that it says, "From the director of Die Hard 2". Well, I think Renny Harlin left his Die Hard film alone and went after Die Hard 3. That's right people. If you observe this movie closely and put this on one side and Die Hard 3 on the other side, you can see that there are scenes which are rip offs of Die Hard 3. The antagonist giving the protagonist a series of challenges and "It's about the money" thing, all just goes off with Die Hard 3.You can enjoy it for sure, you will enjoy it for sure. 108 minutes of fun and excitement. Go and watch John Cena in action now.

If you want to fill almost 2 hours with constant tensions and pace, then you have to think of more than 1-2 events - or you get a Colombo-type of crime movie... However, many of these dodges have been used a lot before, so clichés and repetitions are inevitable. In the movie in question, you realize references to many similar movies, including the ones directed by Renny Harlin himself, but several twists and turns (not always plausible though) make the movie in general catchy to follow. Besides, not everything is anticipated, "good guys" die sometimes too and criminals are not brainless types always behind cops in every way... The ending, however, is trivial and the selection of actors was probably caused by low budget; Aidan Gillen as Miles Jackson is the only decent one, all others are rather uninviting, even the leading actors (John Cena looks like a buff).Thus, 12 Rounds is not among the best action movies, but definitely not among the worst; if you like chases, explosions and shootings and letting your mind rest, then you get a decent entertainment.

I praise this movie! Creative concept and unpredictable until the very end. I was duly entertained. Yes it's a rather shallow film with underdeveloped characters and the most linear storytelling I have seen in a while and normally films can suffer when this is the case but Renny Harlin gets away with it. Not only on par with the standards for the genre i would say, but he does it in a very convincing way too.It works because the film flows with a continuously high pace and has a clear focus on the strong points: the action and the story. No time to slow down and deliver speeches, check the backgrounds for moral decisions, delve to deeply into emotions etc. There's no hidden ambition from the director to make us redefine ourselves or the world we live in. When people watch cartoons they have no problems taking it for what it is and i think this is also the right frame of mind for this movie.The center of this piece are of course the action scenes which are impeccable, made the old school way without tiresome CGI:s. The acting is not great but it definitely doesn't take anything away from the film either. Obviously there wasn't much of a heavy script to work with anyway, but the scarce dialog serves its purpose not to disrupt the pace and the flow.The problems John Cenas character is forced to solve to save his girl reminded me somewhat of the skills of McGyver and that of course is not a bad thing! I also particularly liked the villain played by Aidan Gillen. With a 22 million dollar budget i think Renny Harlin made the best possible movie he could have done for that amount of money. I could mention many films with a considerably larger budget being worse in several aspects. Therefor i give 7.5/10. In my world this is the maximum rating for this kind of popcorn action.In an entertainment industry burden with CGI and self-appointed reformers of the world, we should all pay our respect to Harlins obvious craftsmanship and old school techniques in putting action on photographic emulsion and his obvious reluctance to be anything else than entertainment. Pop the popcorn and let the action begin!