12 ROUNDS

Director:  Renny Harlin

Year of Release:  2009

First thing I have got to say is, this is an action film, not my favourite genre, I find my concentration weaning during long chase scenes, and there are lots of those in ’12 Rounds’.

Despite this, I quite like the premise, a terrorist kidnaps a detective’s girlfriend, in revenge for him killing the love of his life. In order to rescue his girlfriend, the detective must complete 12 challenges, hence the title.  It moves along at quite a pace, although the set pieces are fairly run of the mill and, in some cases, a little too long for my tastes.  Jon Cena, in the central role of detective Danny Fisher is terrible, to say he is wooden is an understatement. Yes, he can handle the action well enough, but when it comes to the drama his delivery is terrible, he really should stick to wrestling,

Aidan plays ‘Irish’ terrorist, Miles Jackson, stereotypical, to say the least, I don’t get his accent either, I think he is watering down his natural (and incredibly sexy) Irish accent for the American audience.  His screen time is fairly short, considering he has second billing, he does what he can with a pretty dismal, cliched scrip.  Miles comes across as a bit of a pantomime villain, Aidan’s natural charisma shining through, which in this case kind of goes against the character.  You are told he has done all these terrible things, but somehow you can’t really believe it.

We know Aidan is capable of playing chillingly psychotic characters, John Boy Power in Love/Hate for example, Miles Jackson, however, rarely gets his hand dirty and prefers to do his killing from afar. As a result, I think some of the danger is taken out of the character. Miles prefers psychological warfare as he sets Danny the various challenges which serve to move the story (as much of it as there is) forward. 

The plot serves the action, rather than the other way around, and there are various plot holes, the way in which Miles breaks out of prison is not really explained in any depth, it is also difficult to believe he set up all the challenges with the help of only one other person.  Then there is the scene where Danny drops from a considerable height, supposedly with a bomb in a box, surely it would explode as soon as he hit the ground! I also think it’s pretty farfetched that Miles is capable of setting all these challenges and puts them into play without being caught, are the police department in New Orleans really that inept. I guess that doesn’t really matter in this kind of film, as long as it gets us to the next set action piece.

In short, whilst this isn’t one of Aidan’s best films, it’s certainly not his worst.  If you have someone in your life that prefers action over story telling this is the ideal film to share with them.  Aidan looks gorgeous except for the hair, one of the things we all love about our boy is his messy hair, but in some scenes here it’s like he hasn’t brushed it for a week.