Director: James Nunn
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Duration: 82 minutes
The Marine 6: Close Quarters (DVD) – Movie Review
When your movie series has made it to the sixth installment, you’re either doing very well with your franchise, or you’re just pumping out crappy movies one after another. With this series of action flicks we had the feeling it would be the latter, but after watching this title, which seems to be the last, we were actually pleasantly surprised for the most part. While some scenes are absolutely ridiculous, as far as an action movie goes, with a somewhat unknown cast of pro wrestlers, you’ll get a healthy dose of cool fights to last a while.
The story starts off with a sparring match between Jake (Mike ‘The Miz’ Mizanin) and Luke (Shawn Michaels), who clearly go way back during their marine days. Nonetheless, Jake now works as a paramedic and Luke helps veterans build up their lives again. After their sparring match, Luke wants Jake to accompany him to see a veteran that is squatting in an old factory, and refuses any help. Luke believes Jake can convince him, as Jake served with the squatter’s deceased son. Everything seems to be going fine, except for the encounter with the veteran, as he is clearly not going to change his mind and thus live in poverty like he has been doing for quite some time.
In the background of all of this a major criminal is facing trial, but it seems he has enough henchmen who want to keep him out of prison. In order to make the jury undecided, Maddy Hayes (Rebecca Quin), the villain’s daughter, kidnaps one of the jury member’s daughter, Sarah (Louisa Connolly-Burnham), in order to stall the trial and make the jury indecisive. While this seemed like a great plan for the criminals, they didn’t expect to have Jake and Luke wandering around the old factory they were hiding in. From here on out, it’s all about saving Sarah and getting out alive, as the enemy forces seems to be large in number.
While the writing is laughable at times, especially when it concerns the gun battles, the movie actually has a very pleasant flow. You’ll go from one action sequence to the next, with a little information sprinkled in-between. The movie builds up its suspense properly but there are moments that could have done with a bit more information surrounding the ongoing trial. Nonetheless, the pacing is decent and the movie isn’t too long, which both work to the movie’s advantage. Due to some circumstances in the movie, we believe that it is the final installment of the series, and in terms of endings, the creators did a fairly good job.
For a movie that has a cast that exists mainly out of pro wrestlers, the acting performances are actually quite decent and convincible. Even the scenes they act out don’t feel cheap and for some reason it’s actually quite fun to see a few new faces on your television set, instead of the same cast members being cast over and over again. In this iteration we’ll be following Mike ‘The Miz’ Mizanin, who plays Jake Carter for the fourth time in a row, and he pick up his role in a proper fashion. Accompanying him in the battles to come there’s Shawn Michaels, who plays Luke Trapper, a more experienced army veteran who spends his life looking after other veterans. Louisa Connolly-Burnham plays the helpless maiden in distress in this flick, and she’s quite a vision to behold, even though she might be a ‘plain Jane’ for many. On the other side of the fence we have another pro wrestler, namely Rebecca Quin, who plays the villain in the movie. Or at least the tangible villain, as the evil overlord who is about to get convicted isn’t even shown in the movie.
The extra sequences on the DVD edition of The Marine 6 are somewhat lacking in quantity, as they will only prolong your action packed adventure by ten minutes. You’ll get to watch a small making of sequence about the movie itself and a short one about the fights in the movie. As this is the final installment of the series (we think), it would have been nice to have some more additional content for those who have been following the series from the start, or at least watched all the movies with Mike in the lead.
Conclusion
We actually thought The Marine 6: Close Quarters would be utter garbage, especially seeing it was the sixth movie in a somewhat low budget series, but we were somewhat pleasantly surprised. While it’s still impossible to wholeheartedly recommend this movie, it’s still a decent action movie in terms of hand-to-hand fighting sequences. It’s mainly the unrealistic and somewhat ridiculous gunfights that drag the entire movie down. Fun for a watch and certainly OK to pick up in a sales bin.
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