This Means War Review

27th Feb 2012

FDR Foster (Chris Pine) and Tuck (Tom Hardy) are two special CIA field agents working together and the best of friends. FDR is the ladies man who is out to wine and dine and impress all the ladies he can. He has various approaches and is pretty good at picking up the most unsuspecting of women. Tuck is more of a loveable lunk who doesn’t quite know his way around such things. He already has one failed marriage and a young son.

Enter Lauren (Reese Withersoon) as your typical Girl desperate for a guy. Through various plot convolutions both guys end up dating her. Upon learning this they both decide to continue the ruse and let her pick who she wants to date. But the further in each dating relationship goes, the more bent out of shape the rules become and the friendships becomes more risky.

Amazingly the comedy of this film is the strongest part. Both guys work well with Witherspoon, but they work even better together. It is scary to note that pine appear much taller than Tom hardy (Which makes you wonder when he is next to be seen playing Bane in the next Batman flick). But the chemistry between the friends is funny and is elevated to hilarious levels as they try to sabotage each other’s dates.

Witherspoon is fine in her role, but has a few problems. For one when we are introduced to her at work it is a visual overload of bright colours making you wonder if we just leap from one film to some kids film – But when you learn what she does for a living (Testing out products) it explains the poor set design around her. She is also lumbered with one of those best friends who are vulgar in every scene in an attempt to grab the laughs and the screen for themselves. If you like those types of characters that are just puerile at best in their humour then she will indeed steal the show for you. If you think it’s just cheap writing at best then it will be the films low point.

Witherspoon also has the hard task of holding our sympathy. Should someone really date that long before mentioning the truth to the men? And yet when she eventually finds out the truth herself she is furious with them? Yes by the third act you kind of wonder just how serious to take these people as clearly they are all living on another planet.

It is also worth mentioning that this is a McG movie (Charlie’s Angels/ Terminator Salvation). Yes this does mean that the action scenes (and there are a few) are all pretty much atrocious. They guy still can’t direct his way out of a paper bag when it comes to action, which is a real waste. The less said about the darkly lit, “Evil Music” themed bad guy the better. But it is worth noting that this is perhaps McG’s best film to date. It’s simply the most fun, and is worth it for the male leads alone. You won’t remember much about it the week after; but as a date movie – you could do a lot worse.