The Marine 4: Moving Target, 2015
Directed by William Kaufman.
Starring Mike “The Miz” Mizanin, Melissa Roxburgh, Josh Blacker, Matthew MacCauli and Summer Rae.
SYNOPSIS:
Jake Carter is assigned to protect a “high-value package,” a beautiful whistleblower trying to expose a corrupt army defense contractor.
It seems impossible to imagine a film that is compromised of 90% action sequences that are so boring it can literally put someone to sleep, but in hindsight I feel like I should have expected nothing less from WWE Studios. Their latest release is the fourth entry in The Marine franchise (how there are four of these movies is beyond me) titled Moving Target, which sounds like a really dumb subtitle for a film and is. The gimmick of the film is that almost all of its shootouts are filmed in a jungle filled with moss infested trees, hence everyone is a moving target? Get it? Haha, yeah, it’s as lame as it sounds.
Starring as the titular Marine is once again WWE superstar The Miz, delivering a performance that is not awesome. All of his lines come across forced and unconvincing, as if he is taking his acting skills for performing in front of a live audience (which are quite good) and trying to apply them to acting in a movie, which simply doesn’t work because the two are obviously very different styles of acting. He also has very empty facial expressions, as if he doesn’t know how the hell he should feel during each scene.
Believe it or not though The Miz is probably the best aspect of The Marine 4: Moving Target, which should speak volumes of how atrocious a movie it is. His female sidekick companion that he is forced into babysitting is excruciatingly unbearable not just because her acting is somehow about five times as worse than The Miz, but also from a character standpoint considering her life is saved multiple times yet she still runs off getting into danger. I suppose it’s worth it though because the best scene in the entire movie is an unintentionally hilarious moment where The Miz turns his back on her only to get smashed in the back of the head with a rock. I’m pretty sure most Marines are not this stupid but ok WWE.
Summer Rae is also in this movie but I don’t know why considering she plays a generic soldier amongst the forces of generic bad guys, and literally only gets two lines in the whole movie. There is currently a movement going around in WWE called “Give Divas A Chance”, and the absolute nothingness to this performance is pretty telling to how that movement is panning out. If you didn’t know Summer Rae was in this movie you could probably watch the entire thing and not even know; she’s that invisible.
Alright, no one is watching The Marine 4: Moving Target for its story or compelling acting performances, but rather the chance to see a WWE superstar wield a rifle and mow down a bunch of evil terrorists. Unfortunately, not even that is fun. There is a chase scene that is so pointlessly long and boring I actually started to fall asleep, but what made everything truly hilarious is that every time I opened my eyes The Miz was laying on his back in this flatbed truck holding the rifle in the same position shooting wildly hoping to hit something. Furthermore, that’s an accurate description of every gun sequence in the movie; people in a jungle shooting at nothing with the camera cutting to a different angle every second as if Kevin Dunn himself edited the freaking movie.
There are also some really weird directorial decisions, such as that when women get shot in they don’t bleed. They die, but there’s no blood splatters even though everyone else in the film gets a horrible CGI effect as they slump to the ground awkwardly like a sack of potatoes. My initial thought was that WWE didn’t want to showcase violence against women, but if that’s the case why even cast a woman police officer to just stand there and get shot? The movie is already rated R so it isn’t like they were risking a higher rating.
To be honest though I have stopped thinking about it because The Marine 4: Moving Target is a pretty bad movie. It’s only enjoyment comes from how unintentionally hilarious it can be at times, like The Miz escaping a jungle set to cliché tense music, the music stopping, Miz looking on in the distance at some bar that randomly happens to be located outside of the jungle, and the music picking up again as he races towards a parked car to hijack. He also has some very cringe worthy one-liners like “Call my bluff bitch!” that are entertaining in a so bad it’s a good way. 98% of this movie is straight garbage though.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Robert Kojder – An aficionado of film, wrestling, and gaming. Follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook
https://youtu.be/pnc360pUDRI?list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
Originally published April 30, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
