12 ROUNDS - a movie so bad its been disowned by its screenwriter

12 ROUNDS is a piss-poor, formulaic, buddy-cop action flick, that has the cast and production values of a B-movie. It's basically a break-out vehicle for WWE wrestling star John Cena - a man so massive the screenwriter actually makes a joke about him being "freakishly large". And speaking of the screenwriter, despite the IMDB credit for Daniel Kunka, the flick was actually been written by Shane Black, the guy who wrote the massively superior Lethal Weapon movies and, more recently, the quirky thriller, KISS KISS BANG BANG. 12 ROUNDS is a humourless caricature of all that made the Lethal Weapon films great. Two humble beat-cops cum buddies (John Cena, Brian White) happen to intercept an international arms dealers (Aidan Gillan) when he's in New Orleans for the weekend. A year later, and the beat cops have been promoted to detective and the arms dealer has broken out of prison. In order to get revenge, he blows up the cop's house and kidnaps his girlfriend. The cops have to jump through 12 tasks in order to see her again. Yes, yes, despite the faux-realism of the hand-held Bourne-esque action sequences, this plot is incredibly, implausibly contrived. There are lots of chase scenes, none of which set the pulse racing, some mediocre acting, and an entirely predictable denouement. Seriously, just stay home and watch LETHAL WEAPON or BEVERLY HILLS COP and see how this stuff is supposed to be done.

12 ROUNDS was released earlier this year in Australia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, the USA, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, New Zealand, the UAE, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Russia, the Ukraine, Finland and Mexico. It is currently on release in the UK, Germany and Portugal. It opens in June in South Korea, Turkey and Romania; on July 31st in Italy; and in Bolivia, Brazil and France in mid-August.

CLEANER - justifiably overlooked DVD of the month

Renny Harlin (DIE HARD 2) directs a contemporary thriller penned by debutant writer Matthew Aldrich. The whodunnit has a nice original concept - Samuel L Jackson plays an ex-cop widower who runs a company that specialises in cleaning up crime scenes. All goes tits up when he cleans up a particularly grizzly murder BEFORE the police have been called in, thus flushing away the evidence. The problem is that the whodunnit is fairly obvious thanks to the type-casting of Eva Mendes as a femme fatale and the fact that you wouldn't cast Ed Harris for anything other than a leading role. Moreover, Sam Jackson's personality and same-y acting once again overwhelms any particular nuances in his character. In fact, I was pretty undewhelmed by the performances of all three leads. Only Keke Palmer does a decent job playing the daughter of the Sam Jackson character. So, despite striking visuals and a rather deliberately artful voice-over style, definitely one to avoid.

CLEANER played Toronto 2007 and was released in Finland, Denmark, Norway, Russia, France, Taiwan and Israel last year. It was released in Japan earlier this year and will be released in Spain on June 12th. It went straight to DVD in the US, UK and Australia.

THE COVENANT - less horror, more nonsense

THE COVENANT is a mildly amusing teen flick that happens to have some warlocks and wire-fu in it. A teenage girl transfers to an exclusive American prep school and begins flirting with a hot guy from the swim team. Trouble is, the hot guys from the swim team are collectively known as the "Sons of Ipswich". This means that they have low level super-powers and drive about in cool cars saying stupid things like: "I'm going to make you my Wee-yotch!" One of the Sons starts a feud with the other sons, culminating in him taking the hot chick hostage and some low-level wire-fu stunts. Stuff gets blown up. The boy gets the girl. You don't get those 90 minutes back. But hey, what should we expect from the director of the piss-poor Exorcist prequel, not to mention THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT and CUTHROAT ISLAND? Renny Harlin has sure fallen a long way off the pace of DIE HARD 2.

THE COVENANT was released last fall and is now available on DVD.