12 Rounds

The Wrestler director Darren Aronofsky recently lamented the decline of the action movie muscle man. But with the recent comebacks of Willis, Stallone and Van Damme, and the popularity of Gerard Butler and Jason Statham, it appears that audiences are hungry for old-fashioned he-men. 12 Rounds comes from the WWE stable and puts wrestling he-man Cena centre stage as a New Orleans cop forced to run dangerous errands for the arms dealing mastermind (Gillen) holding his girlfriend (Scott) hostage. The script shamelessly pilfers from the Speed and Die Hard movies, but it’s tightly plotted, and Cena proves to be a solid screen presence with everyman qualities lacking in many stars of his kind. More importantly, genre veteran Harlin impressively stages the refreshingly CGI-free action, which, despite the modish shaking cameras and frenetic editing, never becomes confusing. It may seem disposable, but the New Orleans setting lends real weight to the distrust of authority and blue-collar camaraderie, the atmosphere that of a cynical, fatalistic post-war thriller.