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Blu-ray Review: “The Marine 5: Battleground” Starts Out Promisingly But Quickly Loses Ground

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While working as an EMT back stateside Jake Carter after responding to a distress call, finds himself caught up protecting a person of interest from a biker gang ruthlessly hunting them down.

I thoroughly enjoyed “The Marine,” with WWE Superstar John Cena playing the titular character. He was joined by a good supporting cast including the always dependable T-1000 himself, Robert Patrick. The movie was produced by WWE Studios in which its sole mission was, and still is, to produce feature films for its large body of wrestlers. John Cena starred in the first movie but did not return for its sequel, “The Marine 2,” instead, wrestler Ted DiBiase took over the role. With parts 3, 4, and now 5, wrestler Mike ‘The Miz’ Mizanin takes over the central character and while he most certainly has onscreen charisma and is more than capable of standing his own ground, he is let down by a formulaic and oh-so-very predictable script. While John Cena is much larger than life, even in his acting roles, Mike Mizanin is more down to earth, very unassuming, and an actor I could very easily see going on to make a good career for himself in action movies. Hopefully, he will be able to move past “The Marine 5: Battleground” onto bigger and better projects.

Mizanin plays the role of Jake Carter, an ex-marine who now works as an EMT. When he and his partner Zoe (Anna Van Hooft), receive a dispatch alerting them to a man suffering from a heart attack, the call takes them to an abandoned amusement park on the outskirts of town but instead of finding someone in cardiac arrest, they find two men, one dead from a gunshot wound, the other, Cole (Nathan Mitchell), badly injured. Being that his injuries are gun-related, Jake tries to call the police but Cole begs him not to. He tells them that while he was in prison, he was offered protection by a man named Vincent (Sandy Robson) but once Cole was released, Vincent instructed him to kill Rodrigo, the leader of a rival biker gang. With his wife and young daughter at stake, Cole had no choice and he and his friend did the shooting but got injured during the escape. With the rest of the biker gang in hot pursuit, Jake must save not only Zoe’s life but that of Cole’s, and put his years of experience as a U.S. Marine, to good use.

Thanks to Bruce Willis, many action films over the years have been dubbed accordingly. “Under Siege” was dubbed “Die Hard on a Ship,” “Speed” was dubbed “Die Hard on a Bus,” and the list goes on. Whenever one man took on the might of an army, or even a country, it was dubbed appropriately. While “The Marine 5: Battleground” could most certainly be called “Die Hard in an Amusement Park,” its apparent lack of bigger-budget effects sorely take away that grand moniker. The fight scenes are poorly choreographed and at times, watching them made me want to put on one of Mizanin’s real-life wrestling melees instead, and having seen my fair share of badly-choreographed wrestling matches, they towered high above what was delivered in this movie. I like the plans that WWE Studios and Sony Pictures started out with on “The Marine” franchise, much like Sony’s “xXx” series, the plan was to make each movie with a different star attached, unlike James Bond, each entry into the franchise would star a different actor. Well, after “xXx: State of the Union” failed to light up the box office, they brought Vin Diesel back and after “The Marine 2” failed to match the action, suspense, and overall quality of its predecessor, they found a good, sturdy protagonist in Mike Mizanin and have wisely kept him on board. But all good things must come to an end. “The Marine” franchise obviously makes money on home entertainment and no doubt this latest entry will be profitable but as the series progresses, overall quality declines, and that is never a good indication.

Available on Blu-ray & DVD Tuesday, April 25th

 

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James McDonald

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, James is a Movie Critic with 40 years of experience in the film industry as an Award-Winning Filmmaker. He is also a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association.