(Shakes Head)
The Marine 2 stars Ted Dibiase, aka Ted Dibiase, Jr., the son of the Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase of WWF fame. He plays the stereotypical Hollywood Marine that you’ve seen in a dozen other films — brash and brave (or just stupid?). The film begins with Joe Linwood (Dibiase) in a Thai village, hunting down a high profile weapons trafficker that the US wants killed. He and his partner manage to find the target and they go for the kill, but even within these first five minutes I was smacking my forehead at how unrealistic and silly the script was. The sniping location and posture that Joe takes for the kill is completely inept as he’s very close to the target and takes a position in plain sight. I chuckled at the Hollywood scope he had on his rifle — complete with a variety of pointless numbers that changed as he ever so slightly moved. And, after the kill shot, he and his spotter stay to try and kill the other six bad guys armed to the teeth with automatic weapons and a grenade launcher, rather than ex-filtrating to safety. Of course, it doesn’t matter when the bad guys can’t shoot for crap — even with the grenade launcher at range of seventy-five yards, the terrorists could not hit their target. They do manage to kill an innocent kid of course which is supposed to be a traumatic event for Linwood and a way to develop his character. For a movie that is trying to be realistic, it sure wasn’t off to a good start.
Naturally, nothing changes over the course of the next eighty minutes. After surviving this goofy sniper mission, Linwood has a two week leave which he spends with Lara Cox, who plays his wife Robin. She is in charge of planning a party for a wealthy author who is also opening up a resort on a remote island in Southeast Asia. They arrive at the resort and everything is going well until a few boatloads of terrorists storm the resort and take everyone hostage. These separatists are against Western ways and want a tribute (i.e., cash) to free the hostages. I have no idea what their plan is after that, considering they’re on an island that has a nearby military base where local soldiers spend nearly the entire movie planning an assault that they never get to do because Linwood singlehandedly saves the day…(rolls eyes). Linwood manages to be the hero despite some confusingly stupid decisions and yet more unrealistic and unintentionally humorous action. Take the scene where he pulls a terrorist into a pool, for example. Even with guards just thirty or so yards away, they don’t hear the big splash or notice their pal is gone. Furthermore, Linwood puts a bowie knife through his chest underwater and not a drop of blood spills. What gives? This is just silly.
About the only bright spots in the film are a couple of parts from a brief fight sequence between Linwood and two terrorists. This sequence let Director Roel Reine do something he’s always wanted to do – film a fight between Eastern and Western cultures. So while the two terrorists are doing some Muay Thai moves, representing the East, Dibiase is in there doing haymakers and dropkicks for the West. Yeehaw. The choreographer during this brief scene is okay, and that’s one bright spot for the movie. The other bright spot was Church, played by Michael Rooker. Had he a bigger role in this film, I think that could have helped, but even he wasn’t safe from the goofy script.
Presentation and Features
You might expect The Marine 2, a brand new film, to look pristine on Blu-ray, but you’d be wrong. For the most part, it does look pretty good, with the beautiful Thai countryside helping matters. However, there are a lot of scenes with grain, and actually several scenes (totaling a few minutes) with some downright horrible grain. These scenes are dark and the grain is so bad it actually looks like a bunch of white specs — I was rather stunned. As for the audio, the 5.1 DTS-HD track does well for itself.
There are several extra features, including:
-Extended Scenes (HD, 9m20) – Four extended scenes.
-Deleted Scenes (HD, 2m43) – Two deleted scenes.
-Making the Cut: Deleted Scenes Montage (HD, 5m47s) – Director Reine intros this brief montage of seamlessly connected, miscellaneous deleted scenes that play to music rather than using actual filmed audio.
-Making of Featurettes (HD, 25m43s) – A six part set of featurettes that document the final fight scene, the East meets West fight scene, and other aspects of the film. Plenty of behind the scenes footage and interviews are included.
-Muay Thai Outtakes – Several minutes in HD of Steadicam and Handheld camera footage from the East meets West fight scene.
And that’s it. To the summary…