This Means War Film Review

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Before I get into reviewing This Means War proper, allow me to tell you guys a long-ass story with seemingly little relevance to the movie at hand. A few weeks ago at the screening for Man on a Ledge, I started shredding the film to pieces with another local critic as soon as the end credits started to roll. My wife, who is usually my guest to these screenings, just sat there quietly as we brayed back and forth about the plot holes and inconsistencies we had just witnessed onscreen.  It was only when we left the theater that she spoke up and said, “I just don’t understand why you guys have to pick everything apart. Why does a movie have to be good for you to enjoy it?”

At the time I thought it was just the ramblings of a woman that had bore the burden of living with me for too long, but now I see what she means. At the moment I am writing this, it is 10pm Thursday night, and while I have not read any of the reviews that anyone else has written for This Means War, it currently is sitting on Rotten Tomatoes with a horrible score of just 23%. As a critic that has seen the film, I totally can understand the bad reviews that the film is receiving; as a movie fan, however, I feel the movie is getting the crap kicked out of it a tad bit excessively.

War introduces us to a pair of inseparable CIA agents named FDR (Star Trek’s Chris Pine) and Tuck (Inception’s Tom Hardy). Partners for years, they have the whole “Odd Couple” thing going on, with Pine’s FDR being all, “I don’t even want to see the girl in my house after I’m done with her,” and Hardy’s Tuck all, “Oy, but I’m so lonely I am, it’s bloody ‘orrible!”

So Tuck opens up an account on some made-up online dating site and runs across Lauren’s profile. Lauren (Election’s Reese Witherspoon) is a working gal attempting to get over a nasty breakup who has had zero success in finding a date lately. Apparently in the world this movie is set in, the guys all find Witherspoon too hideous to ask out; I was expecting to hear someone yell, “Burn it with fire,” when she is seen walking around in sweats early in the flick.

Tuck sets up a date with Lauren, and it goes great. So great, in fact, that afterwards she walks into a video store where she attempts to rent one of the most depressing films of all time, The Vanishing, meet-cuting FDR in the process. I smell a conflict brewing! The two men challenge each other to a contest for her affections which quickly involves seemingly every national security resource at their disposal.
The myriad problems that are being thrown around by others are warranted. At least two of the three lead actors are miscast (Hardy and Witherspoon); with a good argument to be made that Pine isn’t doing himself any favors by seemingly just showing up on set and repeating the same characteristics as he showed in Star Trek. Hardy is called on to mope around for the first quarter of the film, then play a doormat to Pine’s FDR; Hardy is on the precipice of mega-stardom, and this is not exactly what you should be casting him for. Witherspoon basically plays a dolt, is lied to throughout the entire film by both men, and in the end chooses one over the other, even though she now knows they are both horrible human beings.

The film is directed by McG. Last week I wrote in my review for The Vow how it seemed to me that most critics had a hate-on for Channing Tatum, no matter how well he actually does in any particular role. McG is the directing world’s Tatum. The man’s reputation as a bad filmmaker precedes him now, to the point that his career has devolved into basically a work-for-hire situation. Looking over his filmography, you will find plenty of underwhelming movies, but no true bombs; the tales of his box office disappointments are wildly exaggerated, as even the infamous Charlie’s Angels – Full Throttle cleared over $100 million, just $20 million of its predecessor.

Here, it appears more than ever that McG is trying too hard to impress upon everyone that he belongs behind the camera, as he attempts to cram subtle movie in-jokes into the film at inopportune times. The one that I found the worst of them all would be Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid playing on Witherspoon’s television while bugs are being planted in her apartment by the CIA guys. I see what you are trying to do, McG, and Pine is no Paul Newman, no matter how many times you shoot a close-up of his baby blues.

So with everything I just wrote, how do I attempt to turn this around and argue against all of the bad reviews that you will be reading by the time this is published?
I felt that the action sequences, which were too few to be fair, really popped on the screen. Both Witherspoon and Hardy, though miscast, are excellent actors who are no strangers to material that is beneath them, so they are old pros at getting the best out of a shoddy script. The comedy bits always hit the mark and didn’t deliver any duds. Pine…well, Pine should just be embraced as this generation’s Keanu, the wooden actor that everyone loves.

I will simply say this: it's Valentine’s weekend. There are going to be a ton of you that are doing the dinner-and-a-movie thing this weekend, and we both know you’re going to go with something romantic. That basically leaves this or The Vow, and while War isn’t a good movie per se, it is fun, and you won’t get dirty looks from the lonely hearts in the audience for laughing during this one.

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