I recently sat down to watch 12 Rounds, which was released on DVD and Blu-Ray last week. Now I'll say upfront that I'm a fan of action movies, even the dumb ones, because sometimes its just fun to watch stuff explode. And 12 Rounds delivers the explosions and action, heck it even has a couple of plot twists at the end that I didn't see coming, just don't expect great acting (it is a WWE movie after all) and Oscar-calibre dialogue. In fact I wouldn't expect much more than a fun way to waste roughly two hours, because if you expect anything more you will be disappointed.

12 Rounds was directed by Renny Harlin, who made one of the best worst movies ever with Deep Blue Sea, and stars John Cena as Danny Fisher, a New Orleans beat cop who get tangled up with a terrorist in the course of doing his job. The movie begins one year ago as the FBI is on the tail of Terrorist Miles Jackson with the help of local police. But when their set-up goes bad Miles escpaes with his girlfriend and looks to be gone for good, until Officer Fisher finds them and begins a chase that ends with Miles' girlfriend getting hit by a truck and dying.

Cut to one year later and Detective Fisher gets a call from Miles, whose escaped from jail, and has Fisher's fiance hostage. Miles tells Fisher to get her back he just has to survive 12 Rounds. Its a game to Miles and he plans to get revenge for the death of his girlfriend by pushing Fisher to his limits. His "Tests" include breaking into a security deposit box, surviving a fire, keeping his firlfriend from exploding, and 9 other breathtaking tasks. But it's really the final act where the film all comes together and the tasks begin to make sense as a whole. And its the ending which really helps the movie to stay afloat. As I said the acting and dialogue have some problems, but the twists and turns at the end of the movie really make it worth watching.

Now this movie is no Taken or Bourne, but if you're looking for a decent way to waste some time and want to fill it with action and explosions, 12 Rounds isn't a bad way to do it, although you could always just watch Die Hard for the umpteenth time.

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