The Marine 3: HomeFront is the third installation in WWE Studio’s “The Marine” action-packed thrilling action films, this time starring the “most must-see” WWE Superstar, Mike “The Miz” Mizanin, directed and written by Scott Wiper.
In The Marine 3: Homefront, Sgt. Jake Carter (Mike Mizanin) returns home from duty for two weeks, struggling to get back into modern human interaction and society. His duty has changed his mentality and awareness, which causes trouble for Jake, his family and his friends. When Jake’s younger sister, Lily, is captured by extremely violent criminals, the hometown hero must go on an action-packed mission to rescue what he cannot lose, only to learn that the leader of the criminals, Jonas Pope (Neal McDonough) is planning a terrible act of terrorism.
For years, even starting with the first Marine installment, WWE Studios movies have been criticized very often. Usually these criticisms stem from using wrestlers as stars, assembling a cast of amateur actors that work with terrible scripts and dialogue. However, like 12 Rounds, The Marine 3: Homefront may be something special in the long list of WWE Studios flicks. The film stars Mike “The Miz” Mizanin, who naturally carries a daring, witty and entertaining personality, first showcased in his early days on “The Real World”, before signing with WWE and eventually going on to headline WrestleMania as the WWE Champion. The film also has a great villain in Neal McDonough, who ComicBookMovie fans may recognize as Dum Dum Dugan in Captain America: The First Avenger. Both of these men make an otherwise average action flick very enjoyable.
The acting in the film isn’t spectacular, but the film stars put enough heart and passion into their characters that they feel very real once the film starts to kick into gear. The Miz’s performance as Sgt. Jake Carter is far better than most of the WWE material he’s been doing for the past few months and you can tell he really studied and worked hard to be a believable marine. Next, Ashley Bell, who plays Lily Carter, is the highlight of the supporting cast offering a decent performance as a girl who feels that she doesn’t need a protector figure in her life. As stated before, Neal McDonough, who faced down WWE Superstar Dwayne ”The Rock” Johnson in Walking Tall, plays the tough villain of ‘Jonas Pope’. Pope is a ruthless criminal who does whatever he needs to for his work to be finished, including the act of a very vile terrorist act, simply to send a message to the city, and possibly the entire world. Even though The Marine: Homefront doesn’t have an all-star cast, but the actors definitely find their characters pretty quickly and are easily able to deliver great performances.
Whilst the story isn’t completely original, the screenplay holds it’s own against most of the WWE Studios films, but some dialogue comes off as awkward and some scenes seem unnecessary, even at a one hour and forty minute run time. Although the script is predictable, the heart of the film lies with how the actors make the script and dialogue work between each other with very-well established chemistry amongst themselves. More importantly, the chemistry allows each of the actors to help each other through scenes making sometimes bad dialogue bearable. Homefront doesn’t have the best script, but it’s one of the better ones produced by WWE Studios.
The Marine 3: Homefront is a decent action flick worthy of your attention on Blu-Ray, especially if you are a Miz fan, a WWE fan or an action flick fan. Even though the budget shows, the performances and script are decent enough to turn an otherwise terrible flick into a very enjoyable one.
3 out of 5 stars
On the Blu-Ray and the DVD, Homefront brings along five short documentaries detailing some of the more important aspects of the film. First, the “Shipwrecked” featurettes turns out undivided attention towards the boat set used to film the third act of the film, detailing it’s large scale and beautiful(ly ugly) décor. All the actors of the film are interviewed during this featurette, with each giving their personal experiences and thoughts on the ferry. Next up is “The Miz Rocks The Boat” where the star of the film, Mike Mizanin, gives us an in-depth tour of all the scenes he executes during the movie here. I didn’t find this feature as important or compelling as the rest, as it’s basically a camera following The Miz around while he explains each scene with vivid detail to his cup of tea. Thirdly, “The Miz Declassified” strips down the star of the film to his bare essentials and details the his journey of becoming Sgt. Jake Carter, from director Scott Wiper giving him a list of films to study all the way to a real military official giving him intense firearm training. Afterwards comes “Casting Call: Ready To Enlist” which details WrestleMania Axxess’ opportunity to audition for an extra role on the film. This mini-doc focuses on the winner and his incredible journey from a Skype call with a WWE Executive to actually filming his scene on the set and interacting with the cast and crew. I thought this was one of the best featurettes on the disc, but the space also could’ve been used for a special feature on Neal McDonough’s character. Lastly, “The Miz Journal” is a home-made style documentation of Mike Mizanin’s adventures on set from the hard decision of which tea to try, all the way to performing the stunts right.
The special features on The Marine 3: Homefront are very well done and are worth the sale price if the movie doesn’t satisfy you.
3.5 out of 5 stars