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Movie Review: This Means War Blu-ray Extended Cut

Chris Pine, This Means War, Tom Hardy

This Means War stars Chris Pine, Tom Hardy and Reese Witherspoon in a romantic comedy that lacks any real warmth or action worthy of bothering with this film even as a rental.

Film making 14/25

Video 20/25

Audio 22/25

Bonus Features 10/25

Total 66/100

Two CIA operatives stop fighting the bad guys and start fighting each other over a girl and wind up almost having the bad guy get both of them and the girl. Again with the over the top stunts and action fighting Jason Bourne style, This Means War just continues the nonstop been there done that routine.

This Means War is so typical of action films that delve into the romantic comedy genre that critics are seeing no humor or must see action in the movie. The acting was so generic and typical for two of the actors that I was unsurprised to not really find myself wanting to recommend this film even for a rental.

This Means War has an overarching plot where the two stars, Chris Pine as Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foster and Tom Hardy as Tuck Henson are CIA agents. FDR is the freewheeling ladies’ man while Tuck has been divorced from his wife and is struggling to get to know his son.

The divorce was the inevitable agent can’t tell his wife what he really does and Tuck can’t even show his son a thing or two about protecting himself for fear of giving away his true identity. The agents are tasked with tracking two brothers who are looking to buy a weapon of mass destruction in Hong Kong.

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In true James Bond style the pair of agents kill one bad guy while the other gets away to inevitably try to get revenge for his brother’s death. During some down time the agents start dating the same girl and both start fighting over her, Reese Witherspoon playing Lauren Scott.

Lauren does not know the two agents are even agents while she is torn between them as they opposites but have their own unique qualities. The agents use company resources to watch the other as they go on dates which eventually leads to both trying to sabotage the others’ romantic interludes.

In the end one gets the girl, they both waste the bad guy and the other agent goes back to his wife and son that had divorced him because she couldn’t handle the lies even if she didn’t know what they were. The beginning of the movie is stolen right from James Bond and Mission Impossible films with the same stylized intro complete with credits which just seemed too tacky.

The movie continues to rob and steal from other films with the fighting and stunts so much like Jason Bourne and now so many other action films that it is getting boring. The over the top stunts and scattered plot does nothing to encourage any viewer to care about the film even as a quick diversion from reality.

Audio and video quality are more than acceptable with great video transfer to Blu-ray without many problems that are so distracting that you couldn’t enjoy the film if that were possible. I think by the time a film hits the store shelves the company responsible for putting the film onto disc shows how well the film did in the theaters.

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The film looked like they just quit caring enough to do a first rate job and just put it to disc with a once through for cleanup and moved on to the next project. The audio is better than video but here you get almost what you would have in theatres from the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track so that is no surprise.

This Means War has great surround sound but the fact that the film is so action packed with explosions and gun fights means surround would have to be used well. The film just does not have enough impact on screen in any entertaining way so the audio and video quality can only not take away from the film.

Bonus content on the extended edition of the Blu-ray release includes both the theatrical release and the extended version with three alternate endings. Extra content also includes a gag reel and an extra scene about a bachelorette party but these are not that good but not unexpected.

All the extras mean little to adding value to the films package when the movie itself is not that great so you get more of the same in the bonus content which is pretty standard when the film does not do well in theatres. will fall by the wayside as films go as it was not good enough to bother with renting and not bad enough to win any raspberry awards.

You can kind of tell that a film is not going to be good when they do not even bother with a website so just skip renting This Means War which is not all that entertaining in the end.