Movie Review #32 This Means War (2012)

- Can the perfect date movie be made?

I don't much partake in “date movies”, mostly because I can't see how a movie is a good date. I want to watch it in silence but a date is where you get to know someone. No, this kind of movie to me should be advertised as a movie that a stereotypical male and female may enjoy. Although that sounds terrible and I just said it so maybe date movie just means that and they don't really mean you have to be on a date to see it. Whew, I should have digressed three sentences ago. Okay. This Means War, does it contain all the action, explosions and suave super machismo action stars along with a sexy, sleek femme fatale? Does the movie have a gripping love story based around ideals of the perfect sexy man with a chiseled chest and chin showing the independent lady that her heart can have anything she wants? Laughably, no. This movie does not contain most of those things; it tries for the most part but stumbles in almost every instance.

The movie starts with our two heroes (male orientated action introduction) where we met FDR Foster (played by Chris Pine) and Tuck (played by Tom Hardy). The smooth-talking ladies man and the sweet down-to-earth man, respectively. Then we also meet the leading lady, the head of a product testing company Lauren (played by Reese Witherspoon). This is probably the best part of the movie, to be honest. It's really the middle of the movie that is pretty insulting to all viewers. The meat of this movie is that two CIA agents have found out they want the same girl and decide to make a bet on who can snag her up. One of the agents is divorced, a romantic at heart and overall a lovable guy. The other agent just gets women, uses them and throws them to the wind. For most of the movie they do a decent job of showing the viewer that the sleaze-machine is more in it to win the bet than to actually fall in love. Unfortunately, both guys are in no way upfront to Lauren about their jobs and both go to ridiculous lengths (and CIA funding) to find out things they shouldn't know about Lauren to impress her. But Tuck is a little more honest in who he is and I felt that he is generally the better character. But the bottom line is that they are both actually pretty deplorable guys and by the end of the movie, she has to know that she just went down liar's lane with these two guys. Marrying either of them is a laughable action but yet in the last scene that does indeed happen.

From an action point of view however, the introduction is hands-down the best you're going to get. There are some almost good action scenes involving paintball, a car chase and a bit of fisticuffs but it wouldn't satisfy the most basic of action desires I'm afraid. All of them were too brief and held no real impact within the movie and certainly nothing memorable five minutes after you turn the movie off.

Let me show you my finest two accessories to any fashionable person.

For a movie that wanted to please everyone, I have a hard time believing it actually pleased many people. It is insulting to women on how they pick men with terribly stereotypical faults. Lauren knows that she was lied to in so many ways, and with the ending how it was , I'm insulted she didn't walk away from both males and just look for someone who isn't a blatant liar. For action scenes it's piss poor with very little to make it redeemable. The acting was decent enough, all three major actors hold their own, the acting was a bit hammed up in a few places but certainly from looking at their other works, I'd say the script was more of them problem then them. I should mention that it seemed to me as though Tom Hardy was the only one to me who was acting. Or perhaps the other two are just being typecast too much. I felt early on that Witherspoon and Pine weren't really surprising me with anything. Hardy's lighter romantic side was at least something I had not seen in the likes of Nemesis, RocknRolla and Batman to name a few. The bottom line is that it's a poor romantic movie, not that funny with dull action.

I give it 4/10

PS: I actually forgot about the subplot of the Russian terrorist because it's only really ever mentioned at the intro and outro.