Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Joe, played by professional wrestler Ted DiBiase Jr. in this WWE produced movie ‘The Marine 2’, is a marine. Duh. Joe and his marine homey are in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is a pretty big place and just telling us you’re in Southeast Asia is akin to saying you’re on the planet Earth but we’re rolling with it. Joe is a marksman and his boy is his spotter. Joe takes out his target with extreme prejudice but sadly a child dies in the melee and now Joe is sad and tortured. Even though the kid really brought this upon himself. Seriously. What Joe could use right now is a vacation, which introduces us to Joe’s toasty little wife Robin (Lara Cox) who just happens to be an event planner with her next gig being at the opening at some posh Southeast Asian resort. Can you say rest and relaxation? Well, hold that thought.

I don’t know where this place is supposed to be but director Roel Reine photographs it beautifully and if it wasn’t for the crazed, murderous terrorist that inhabit this joint I wouldn’t mind vacationing there my own damn self. But we’re getting a touch ahead of ourselves. So Joe and Robin enjoy this glorious locale doing the whole tourist thing with Joe resisting the urge to kick the ass of Robin’s asshole boss Mr. Connor (Darren Coleby) when the terrorist show up uninvited at a late night soirée. Joe does his best to show these fools how well Sam has trained his American boys in a 1 against 100 battle but it’s not enough as he is knocked unconscious and dragged to safety by a man called Church (Michael Rooker), the Margaritaville style, ex-Army Ranger, snorkeling boat captain he met earlier in the day.

So here’s how the situation breaks down. We have an evil terrorist led by the evil Damo (Temuera Morrison) who has already sliced off a head to let The Imperialistic West know that he means business. He hates The West and what they have done to his island, but he sure doesn’t hate our money as he is demanding to get stupid paid or the hostages, which includes the lovely wife Robin, will all die. I’m sure we all know he plans to kill them anyway but we knew that even before the movie came on. The government of this mythical island is monitoring the situation but we need action, not monitoring. There is a government representative who has escalated things but that goes all to hell too. Now what?

Come on man, you know what! It’s time for The Marine baby. Sure these clowns are holed up in a virtual fortress, possess a cause that they are ready to die for and are armed to the teeth with automatic weapons trained on the hostages ready to set it off at the slightest provocation, but Joe has his trusty rifle, some fireworks and some blueprints. Clowns. It’s over for you.

It would be rather pointless to attempt to deconstruct this movie ‘The Marine 2’. Note that I completely missed John Cena in the original Marine, a movie which I’m told has very little to do with this one outside of the two main characters choice of occupation. I also liked this movie better than the last WWE production I spied in ‘Behind Enemy Lines: Columbia’. But as far as ‘The Marine 2’ goes I would think it delivers pretty much anything anybody could be looking for in disposable action entertainment. While the narrative lacks originality it is still very simple and does a very good job of staying out of the way from what is important in a movie like this, that being the sky high murderization rate of terrorist in yet another iteration of ‘Die Hard’ with this time Die Hard hanging out at a posh Southeast Asian resort.

Ted DiBiase Jr., at least as far as professional wrestlers who act go, was pretty good as the hero in this movie. Not surprisingly he handled the physical stuff with relative ease but surprisingly when it actually came time for him to recite a line, and especially when it came time to act like he was actually digging on his pretty co-star he did that well too. Temuera Morrison was a fairly underwhelming villain, at least when compared to whoever that over acting thespian was that played his extremely hostile baby brother, who may have had a name in this movie, but was only addressed as ‘little brother’ to keep us informed that these two are indeed related. That actor found the top and proceeded to go three notches over it and in so doing added some quality humor to the movie with his outstanding performance. And of course there was the veteran Michael Rooker as that guy who doesn’t want to ‘get involved’ only to get involved when the script needs him most.

So while ‘The Marine 2’ might not have achieved cinematic greatness, which I don’t think it was aiming for anyway… I do think it served its purpose as a solid piece of Saturday afternoon, completely disposable slice of terrorist murdering entertainment.