This Means War (**½)
Directed by: McG
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy, Chris Pine, Til Schweiger,
Chelsea Handler, Abigail Spencer, Angela Basset
Seen: February 24th 2012
**½ Out of ****
As far as romantic comedy spy movies go, This Means War is relatively
fun, and if you can suspend disbelief, quite entertaining. Now it’s still not a
very good movie, but it’s not a waste of time either, as the action is over the
top; the visual effects are mostly good (apart from one scene so appallingly
bad that it spoils the entire effort); and the romance is stock standard
romantic comedy fare – with one difference, two guys, both good guys, are now fighting
for the girl.
Tuck (Hardy) and FDR (Pine) are best friends and top CIA agents. On a
mission in Hong Kong, things go wrong and instead of covertly capturing the villains
Heinrich (Schweiger) and his little brother, they very publicly manage to kill
Heinrich’s brother and botch the mission. Back home they are assigned to desk
duty for their protection, and out of boredom (probably), the more resigned
Tuck signs up to an online dating site after seeing an advert on TV. He is
almost instantly matched with Lauren Scott (Witherspoon), a product testing
executive going through a rather embarrassing bit of after-breakup blues. The
two immediately hit it off, but as their date comes to an end and Lauren
leaves, she runs into the womanising FDR, hell-bent on asking her out on a
date.
At the urging of her relatively dodgy friend Trish (Handler), Lauren
starts dating both of them, and it doesn’t take them long to discover this.
Tuck and FDR decide to keep their knowledge of each other from her and compete
for her. After about one minute of the movie is devoted to the two working
surveillance on Lauren into their manhunt for Heinrich, things turn into an
all-out intelligence (and later physical) war between the two CIA agents, with
no regard for the tax-payers’ money they are wasting in the process (and
incredibly enough also full cooperation from their CIA buddies). The one thing
that keeps a possible angle of threat in the movie is the imminent return of
Heinrich, out for revenge, coming after them.
While This Means War is relatively funny at times, it is not very
good. Chris Pine channels something similar to his Captain Kirk in Star Trek
last year, but with less J.J. Abrams (Star Trek director) involvement and much
more McG (also directed the Charlie’s Angels movies). Tom Hardy is arguably the
best actor in this movie as he is the only one with some emotional development;
dealing with his son and ex-wife Katie (Spencer). Reese Witherspoon is the
ditsy rom-com female lead and Chelsea Handler tries her best at being the comic
relief but doesn’t deliver. Til Schweiger as the main villain is menacing, for
all of the approximately 2 minutes (combined) he actually features. This Means
War looks cool, but there are simply too many holes to found in it, special-effects-wise,
logically, even emotionally (romantic comedy-wise the honesty aspect would, in
this case, fall flat). The plot can’t have many holes in it as it’s just too
simple to have room for any.
This Means War is all right, but do not expect more than a completely
brainless adventure action romance movie with some cool stunts and funny
moments.
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