who said wrestlers weren't actors?

The Marine

* *

Starring: John Cena, Robert Patrick, Kelly Carlson

The anxiously anticipated second offering from WWE Films hit the DVD rack recently and I've been dying to see it. Their last offering, See No Evil was an atrocity of mankind. The Marine is a little bit better than that for different reasons.

This one stars John Cena as an ex-marine. He and his wife decide to go on a vacation, only to have her kidnapped by diamond thieves and taken on the run. Cena then must track them down and do some marine-style killing to save his love.

I don't know why people don't think wrestlers are actors. Cena acts his way through this movie with back drops, kicking and punching, flying shoulder blocks, dropkicks, monkey flips and spears. Beyond that, his acting is just ok.

I don't know how WWE Films managed to get the T-1000 to be in this either, but Robert Patrick is terrible here as an over-the-top, brutal villain. There's even a joke at the mid-way point of the movie. The diamond thieves sink a million bullets into Cena's stolen cop car, without him getting hurt or losing the car from the road, and one of the thieves remarks to Robert Patrick, 'This guy's the terminator.' I laughed.

Something that I found really bothered me about this was that a lot of the explosions sequences were computer generated. As well as the pieces flying off Cena's stolen cop car. And some other really badly filmed sound stage scenes.

I found myself laughing a lot at this movie. But I found it somewhat enjoyable. I love action movies, but there were a few too many explosions that didn't make sense for me. The acting was stale, but Cena at least, somewhat, fit the role of a marine. Seeing as he salutes in the ring all the time.

I justify my two stars with this: this movie is not good. It's far from being so-so. Its kind of ok. Somewhat entertaining. Mostly, my review is in comparison to See No Evil, which I'm pretty sure I gave a Steaming Pile of Crap rating. I only hope with each new WWE Films movie coming out that they get a little better than the previous.