Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This film had no potential. The plot was overused. Kind of felt like a Taken vibe to it. No good performances. Cheap villain. Cheap ending. Nothing much good to this movie. I will say it has a good few scenes. But it was clichéd. Predictable. With nothing for a script.World Wrestling Entertainment really overdid this trilogy. Making 2 garbage sequels (Being worse than this)Slight pros for the film. There are a few scenes that make you feel thrilled at a brief moment. So it is not a 1 star worthy film. But all and all 3/10. Waste of a film.

Needless to say SPEED (1994) was definitely an inspiration for this movie, to the point that if they'd switch things around just a little bit it could have been a sequel to it.And even though John Cena is better than he usually is in movies, he's just no Keanu (did I say that? Oh yes I did).And Ashley Scott is definitely no Sandra Bullock and furthermore Aidan Gillen no Dennis Hopper.That said, it's not terrible, SPEED (1994) to me is just one of the best blockbuster action movies of the 90's so the chance that it would match up to it would really be second to none.Anyway back to this movie, it's okay fairly mindless popcorn entertainment, Renny Harlin is good when it comes to action-sequences and yet again he delivers on those aspects.I'm usually not bothered to much over shaky cams but this movie contains a overabundance of that and occasionally you wish they would just use steady cam but what can you do? not much.There's really not that much more to talk about the movie, it's not a bad movie we've just seen it before.It's the best movie I've seen with John Cena at least, there is always that.

I like Renny Harlin. I can sit back, watch his films, and just have a good time. There's not much he's done that I haven't liked, and 12 Rounds is included on that list.It's a high octane, non-stop action fest with some pretty good sequences. It's kind of like Die Hard with a Vengeance on the run. John Cena does a great job even if he is coming from a wrestling background. He had an on-screen presence that although towering, is also almost kitten like; soft on the inside and tough as nails on the out.Yes, the film is somewhat mind-numbing, and there's a few flaws in the action, but that's what you watch this for, to watch things pass by on the screen without having to guess anything, just pure entertainment for the action buffs.Renny, I salute you, but please, get back to your blockbusters.

Renny Harlin directed Die Hard 2 rather apt considering the plot for 12 Rounds borrows elements from its sequel Die Hard with a Vengeance.WWE wrestler John Cena plays a cop who arrested a wanted Irish terrorist and in doing so the bad guy's girlfriend gets run over by a vehicle.The said bad guy escapes prison and takes revenge on Cena by holding his girlfriend hostage and getting him to partake in various tasks if he wants to see her alive again.These 12 Rounds of tasks seem to make no sense at first. Cena has to get to one part of the city to another very quickly and in doing so he tends to hang around fretting and talking to the FBI officers who at first seem to be an obstacle. In fact you wonder why the FBI officers pursuing the terrorist were not on his hit list considering they were more responsible for him being arrested in the first place.Eventually Cena realises that he did once watch Die Hard with a Vengeance and figures that the bad guy may have an ulterior motive in his mission and it may not be just revenge because the tasks Cena has performed had some after effects which left parts of the city vulnerable.Harlin is a frustrating director and has been in a downward spiral for some years. This film has a good budget, some good action scenes and rather watchable despite some duff lines, poor plotting and ludicrous scenes. The finale was rather poor in my opinion but for Cena, at then new to movie action roles this was a decent starring vehicle and he was less wooden here than he was in The Marine.