When one first starts researching Blood 'N' Bubble movies, there seems to be an endless supply of great movies to review. Blue Water White Death. Jaws. The Abyss. The list goes on from there. But, after a couple of decades, the list of "much watch" dive movies has gotten rather short. These days I do a lot of my research by diving into the B-Movie bin at our local DVD retail outlet. These are the movies that don't get much critical accalim and often go straight to video. Dive scenes are usually short, or just implied, and the low-budget movie itself is hard to stomach. Here is a brief review on what I watched over the weekend - The Marine - from a script originally written by Wrestling Star Steve Austin. This movie did make it into the theatres and grossed about $30 million before being released on DVD in 2007.
MARINE, THE
2006 WWE films/Fox colour. 97 minutes
Dir: John Bonito Starring: John Cena, Robert Patrick, Kelly Carlson & Anthony Ray Parker.
You can lead a director to the water ... but you can’t make him dive. "The Marine", a movie made by the WWE wrestling entertainment company, stars wrestler John Cena while on sabbatical from the square ring (fans were told his absence from the ring was because he had to recover from a stab wound inflicted by “Jesus”, a bad guy in the ‘rassling’ world). ! Back on screen, after he's unwillingly discharged from Iraq, Cena comes back to America and his beautiful wife Kate ( Kelly Carlson). It only takes a few days before he is once again seeing action. When his wife is kidnapped by a gang of blood thirsty crazed jewel thieves Cena relentlessly tracks them through the swamps of South Carolina (actually Australia and Calgary!) in a stolen police car, a boat and on foot. At one point, after his “hot” police car crashes off a cliff into a dirty river, police divers are brought in to look for bodies. We see the divers suited up and get ready to jump in, but the cameras cut away before they actually get wet. Good thing too, the river looks to be only waist deep! Cena manages to kill everybody in the gang and a bad cop too, he also destroys buildings, trucks and cars. The final scene is an homage to the Bond Movie, Casino Royale. In that 007 flick Eva Green locks herself in an elevator in a sinking Venice apartment building. The lift is slowly filling with water while Daniel Craig, is busy dispatching villains. When he finally is able to jump in and pull her out, it is too late. In The Marine, Cena fights Robert Patrick at an oceanside truck stop. Kelly Carson is handcuffed to the inside of a runaway driver-less truck. The big rig ends up in the ocean and slowly begins to sink, and Kelly can’t get out. Cena beats and burns Robert Patrick into submission and then dives into the water to pull her out. He is too late, she has stopped breathing. But, after bringing to the surface he puts her in a reverse suplex hold (well actually he just gives her mouth-to-mouth) and she is magically brought back to life, just like in real life wrestling.
The Marine is now available in DVD, there is a special Unrated version that includes a number of short features about John Cena.
Rating 1/2 Bubbles
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