FilmSnobReviews

Title: The Marine 5: Battleground
MPAA Rating: R
Director: James Nunn
Starring: Mike ‘The Miz’ Mizanin, Anna Van Hooft, Taylor Rotunda
Runtime: 1 hr 31 mins

What It Is: When the president of a motorcycle club is murdered the two men responsible take-off and run. One man calls 911 stating he’s having a heart attack (to keep the police at bay). The ambulance has EMT Zoe (Van Hooft) and ex-marine Jake (Mizanin). When a group of the bikers led by Alonzo (Rotunda) finds both the ambulance and the man they’re looking for they’ll stop at nothing to have their revenge.

What We Think: For a film in this series, it’s a bit of an improvement. Not much, however. Mizanin is a veteran of this series has been in 2 others. He’s a professional wrestler and he was not the worst performance. That belongs to Anna Van Hooft who is a professional actress with over 20 credits on her IMDb. I’ll tell you what Taylor Rotunda surprised me. I BOLieve (It’s a pro wrestling thing) that he could do some more acting and maybe be pretty serviceable. Van Hooft got NO help from the writing team so it isn’t ALL her fault. Nunn doesn’t reinvent the wheel with his shot selection but the action is shot well enough.

Our Grade: D+, Not so much a bad film as it is one that never had a chance. It’s direct to video film, the fifth in a franchise no one asked to go past the awful first one. Mizanin might be a serviceable actor one day, this is not that day. These WWE films are normally better when they don’t feature one of the companies professional wrestlers. I cannot recommend the film unless you’re a hardcore WWE fan that will see whatever they put out or you’re a desperate completionist determined to see all 5 of these awful movies.