This Means War

This film is abysmal. I actually didn’t notice who the director was until the final credits, but when the words “Directed by McG” popped up at least things then began to make sense. If there is a worse directed film than this all year I’ll buy the Transformers Blu-Ray box set (shudder). Where to begin? The awful editing where dialogue is heard but the actor’s mouths don’t move, fight scenes so badly cut you can’t tell what is going on, a scene in a car chase where whenever there is a long shot one of the cars mysteriously disappears or the moments where the actors have misty breath, despite it supposedly being in the afternoon on a hot LA day? There’s a load more, but you can have fun finding them out for yourselves (if you’re masochistic enough to watch this rubbish). If you want a quick rundown, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy are CIA agents who both fall for the same woman, a product testing executive (no, seriously), played by Reese Witherspoon. The banter between Pine and Brady is quite good, but the whole premise is handicapped by Witherspoon who neither (in this) has the looks or the personality to really convince that BFF’s would go from saving each other’s lives to falling out over her in a few days. The worst character of all though comes in the form of Witherspoon’s best friend, played by Chelsea Handler. Handler is virtually unknown outside of the US and it’ll pretty much stay this way after this. She is saddled with a bloody annoying character, but even that can’t excuse her monotone wooden delivery. It’s all so frustratingly mediocre that when you think back to Christian Bale’s on-set outburst on Terminator: Salvation you can pretty much guess who the real cause of his chagrin was. This just avoids the zero rating due to a few decent quips, but the whole thing is summed up by a script that gets the dates confused of classic Hitchcock films. This is basically saying “I don’t care about cinema”. Nor should you about this pile of pants.

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict
McG makes Michael Bay look like Akira Kurosawa. Now that’s some insult. Rating: 2/10.