The Marine 6: Close Quarters DVD Review

• Actors: Mike 'The Miz' Mizanin, Shawn Michaels, Rebecca Quin
• Director: James Nunn
• Format: Closed-captioned, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: French, Portuguese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Thai, Spanish, English, Japanese
• Dubbed: French, Japanese, English
• Region: Region 1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: November 13, 2018
• Digital Copy Expiration Date: December 31, 2020
• Run Time: 85 minutes

        Continuing the tradition of the franchise with mindless obedience, the latest installment in The Marine series is indistinguishable from the rest, with the exception of a single twist that is more likely to impact future sequels than this one. Following the original theatrical film starring John Cena and its first sequel with a relatively unknown WWE cast member, each future installment has starred Mike “The Miz” Mizanin as former marine Jake Carter. Whether working private security, as an EMT, or simply on vacation, Jake always seems to be in the wrong place at the right time, allowing him to use his training to save lives.

        This time Jake just coincidentally walks in on a gang of international criminals holding a girl hostage in a remote abandoned building. This contrived set-up allows for the usual narrative structure for the franchise, with a marine outnumbered in a isolated location against a bunch of bad actors with inconsistent accents. In slight contrast to previous installments, Jake is given back-up in the form of Luke Trapper (Shawn Michaels), who also provides some of the film’s comedic relief in the form of poorly-written banter. The two of them are visiting a homeless veteran when they stumble on a kidnapping plot being used to blackmail a juror in a high profile trial.

        Jake and Luke are able to rescue the kidnapped girl (Louisa Connolly-Burnham) without too much trouble, but the gang of criminals lock down the building and block all exits. Like the parking garage from one of the previous installments, or the building in Die Hard (which is clearly the model many action films have since utilized), they are trapped and forced to fight their way out of the building by taking the bad guys out one at a time. This basically just provides an excuse for plenty of hand-to-hand fight scenes, so that the WWE cast members can use their only real skills in order to try and make the audience forget about the dialogue scenes.

Among the worst of the wrestlers-turned-actors is villain Maddy Hayes (a.k.a. Becky Lynch), whose Irish accent is painfully inconsistent from one scene to the next, despite actually being Irish. The worst of the acting comes when the film attempts to fabricate an emotional response with poorly written drama. These films work best when audiences aren’t asked to take them seriously. This one goes so far as to end with a tribute montage for a fictional character.

The DVD release includes two making-of featurettes, as well as including a digital copy of the film. The two extras on the disc are fairly generic promo featurettes about the cast and the fight choreography.

Entertainment Value: 4/10

Quality of Filmmaking: 3.5/10

Historical Significance:  2/10

Special Features: 3/10