This Means War

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Release Date: 2 March 2012

Directed by: McG

Starring: Tom Hardy, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Laura Vandervoort, Til Schweiger, Chelsea Handler, Angela Bassett, David Koechner

As trite as mainstream Hollywood produced cinema gets nowadays, This Means War should've been slick, popcorn hoovering fun. Instead it's horribly misjudged, sloppy and the proprietor of some of the worst action sequences in film with a budget in the double-digit millions. Needless to say the talents of both Tom Hardy and Chris Pine are utterly wasted, and the whole thing goes by about as quickly as the passing of gallstones.
Pine and Hardy are two secret agent types who - through some sort of blinding coincidence - both end up dating Reese Witherspoon's high flying executive. Naturally she just can't find a man... Until y'know, these two suave secret agents show up on the scene. The aforementioned two lads are best mates, but ego's soon get in the way as they desperately try to outdo one another for the love of the lady, and utilise every government resource at their disposable to do so. Somewhere in there Chelsea Handler attempts (and fails) to be funny.
One of my biggest problems with This Means War's is that it's so lazy. Movies like Mr and Mrs Smith were obviously the template in terms of tone, but McG's film never puts in the groundwork or bothers attempting to stage decent action sequences. One car care chase ends with Chelsea Handler's car nonsensically spinning off of a freeway after a jump cut into a close up of her face. It comes out of seemingly nowhere, and most of the film is that sloppy - even in terms of the brass tacks technical side.
All too often McG falls back onto the charm of his leading men, and Hardy in particular looks very bored. The British actor is evidently more accustomed to material that requires him to mould a performance nowadays, and while he is more than capable of giving a 'surface only' turn it's plainly obvious his heart wasn't in it here. Pine is a watered down version of the cocky Captain Kirk he portrayed in Star Trek, but is never really given an opportunity to make a proper run at his guy. Witherspoon is miscast; I don't buy those two guys fighting over her and she doesn't convince me in the running time that they should be.
Put simply; This Means War is a bad film and is not worth your money.

Review by Mike Sheridan