Review: The Marine 4: Moving Target

Mike ‘The Miz’ Mizanin is back as ex-Marine now private security guy Jake Carter, part of a security team (also featuring Matthew MacCaull and Roark Critchlow) charged with guarding bratty whistle-blower Melissa Roxburgh. As you might predict, it doesn’t go well. The big bad contractor Roxburgh is tattling on sends a bunch of mercenaries (including Jason Statham wannabe Josh Blacker and WWE ‘Diva’ Summer Rae) to take everybody out. Jake and the girl must flee to safety, but it appears that there was an ‘inside man’, and Jake will have to contend with them too, if he and Roxburgh are to get out of this situation alive.

 

An improvement over The Miz’s first showing in the franchise (“The Marine 3: Homefront”), this 2015 action film from director William Kaufman (“Jarhead 3” with Scott Adkins) and scribe Alan McElroy (who scripted the first film as well as the underrated “Rapid Fire” and “Wrong Turn”) is pretty much on par with the first two films: Watchable, but fairly unremarkable action films. Miz is much more comfortable in the lead this time around, even though any wrestling fan will tell you that he makes for a much better supremely annoying pissant ‘heel’ than ‘babyface’ hero. He can do this, it’s just not casting him to his best advantage, which is bizarre given it’s a WWE Studios film. The film is also really nicely shot (the best-looking film in the series by far), moves at a good clip and has plenty of action in it to keep you awake.

 

The supporting cast isn’t as impressive as the first three films (which featured the likes of Robert Patrick, Temuera Morrison, Michael Rooker, Neal McDonough, and Michael Eklund) in terms of known names, but is fairly respectable in terms of performances. WWE ‘Diva’ (God I hate that term) Summer Rae, however, is a real head-scratcher here. Like I said earlier, it’s a WWE Studios film, yet they make really weird casting choices for their own talent. You would think WWE having their own film studio and making their own films, would want to highlight the talent chosen to appear in their films, right? Unfortunately, Summer gets about the same treatment Wade Barrett got in “Dead Man Down”. She gets barely any dialogue, doesn’t do much more than she says, and doesn’t do much of anything terribly well, really. She’s certainly better off being a villainess than a damsel in distress, but here she doesn’t convince holding a machine gun, for crying out loud. And yet they gave the damn Christmas movie to Paige? I just don’t get it all (Hell, cast Lana, AKA C.J. Perry, who really was an actress before WWE picked her up and has no problem convincing as a tough chick). Then again, I don’t understand why WWE keep giving Miz all these movies without actually pushing him in their wrestling product. He hasn’t touched the main event scene in years. The fact that WWE are more obsessed with magazine covers, hashtags and Twitter than wrestling, is probably a pretty good explanation, I guess. Sorry, non-fans, wrestle-centric rant over. I promise.

 

Truth be told, the only one of the villains to come out looking OK is Matthew MacCaull, and even his character raises red flags just a tad early for what is meant to be somewhat of a surprise. I would’ve liked more scenes with veteran soap actor Roark Critchlow, easily the best actor in the entire film, but sadly not long for this one. Lead actress Melissa Roxburgh is OK, but her character here is a special kind of stupid. She’s aggressively stubbornly stupid and clearly wants to get her stupid arse killed. Speaking of stupid, as much as I kinda enjoyed the action in this, the sheer ridiculosity (that’s my word, I own it) of the blood being splattered took away from it all just a bit. I wasn’t offended, as it was clearly CGI blood and hardly realistic, but there’s just way too much of it to be credible. The grappling contests don’t last very long, but what we get is well-done, even one featuring Miz and Summer Rae that you’d certainly never get to see in today’s WWE. I’m rather glad Summer wasn’t given the clichéd catfight with Roxburgh. That was a great decision.

 

Some ridiculous CGI blood, uninteresting villains, and an annoying lead female character detract from a somewhat enjoyable, if very simplistic action movie. The action itself is well-done, and Miz is starting to find his groove as an actor, but the blood was just too silly and let’s face it, this is pretty formulaic stuff. It’s just OK, which probably puts it near the top of WWE releases, really.

 

Rating: C+