FILM REVIEWS

Director McG returns with “This Means War,” his first feature since that disappointing “Terminator” reboot, “Terminator Salvation,” in 2009.

He made his initial splash with the “Charlie’s Angels” movies (2000 and 2003), and, a decade later, his frenetic action style is starting to feel dated, as if it is from a past era.

With “This Means War,” can McG rein things in and make his characters pop more? Chris Pine, Tom Hardy, and Reese Witherspoon are certainly the cast to help him achieve this aim—if that is his intent.

Hardy in particular, who looks very spiffy here, has a hot career currently, coming off of “Inception” (2010), “Warrior” (2011), and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (2011). He also has a big role in “The Dark Knight Rises” this summer that should accelerate his own rise.

While “This Means War” suffers from a number of those chaotically cut McG action pieces, especially a loud but uninvolving opening in Hong Kong, the film’s greater suffering is found in the assembled talent going to embarassing lengths to try to make this borderline offensive project feel like a good time, much less a Valentine’s date movie.

CIA duo and best friends FDR (Pine) and Tuck (Hardy) find themselves in an ageold pickle: they have been relegated to desk jobs after too many hijinks in the field. That said, their desks are enviably enormous, and they work in the supersleek headquarters of the CIA—in Los Angeles?

Angela Bassett, tragically inserted here, makes a couple of brief appearances as their unforgiving boss.

The guys’ testosterone unstimulated, they start to yearn for improved love lives. There is plenty of sexual tension between them—and they might have made for a cute, bickering gay couple in another kind of movie—but they inadvertently both wind up dating the same lady, lovelorn Lauren (Witherspoon).

Tuck meets her first, through an online dating service, then FDR runs into her at a DVD megastore, and they also click. Wait, a DVD megastore? According to this movie, DVD stores are not only still in business, they are happening places where many singles go to connect.

When FDR and Tuck figure out what has happened, they make a highly questionable “gentleman’s agreement”: to continue as is without informing Lauren of the game they are up to. What they do for work also has to be kept secret, of course, with FDR pretending to be a cruiseship captain and Tuck a travel agent.

The two taunt each other to excess as their rivalry intensifies and their former bromance crumbles, until Lauren finally—as if this were an episode of “The Bachelorette” TV show—gives herself a week to decide between the two. That’s when FDR and Tuck’s competition turns to war.

Using their CIA skills in surveillance and loads of CIA resources against each other, they make it next-to-impossible for either of them to have a successful date with their target, although Tuck gets her to do trapeze acrobatics with him and, in the film’s funniest sequence (as in mildly funny), coerces her into a day of paintballing.

Lauren, meanwhile, is getting consistently bad advice from her sex-obsessed best friend, Trish (a very scary, unpleasant Chelsea Handler). It would be interesting to hear how the nasty Trish would review this movie.

The climax to all this is zany enough, even if it makes no sense whatesover. But it is hard not to, once again, feel sorry for all the talent involved.

Hardy, perhaps with the most to prove, tries harder than anyone else, but all the actors get eaten up by this machine and spit out. It is as if Witherspoon, Pine, Hardy, and the rest are crying out to the audience: “Save us from this madness! Save us from McG!”

Cast

Lauren – Reese Witherspoon
FDR Foster – Chris Pine
Tuck – Tom Hardy
Heinrich – Til Schweiger
Collins – Angela Bassett
Nana Foster – Rosemary Harris
Trish – Chelsea Handler

Credits

A 20th Century Fox release.
Directed by McG.
Written by Timothy Dowling and Simon Kinberg.
Produced by Robert Simonds, James Lassiter, Will Smith, and Simon Kinberg.
Cinematography, Russell Carpenter.
Editing, Nicolas de Toth.
Original Music, Christophe Beck.

Running time: 97 minutes.