Why So Blu?

The Marine 4: Moving Target (Blu-ray Review)

WWE Superstar Mike “The Miz” Mizanin is back as American hero Jake Carter in an all-new, thrill-packed Marine adventure! Now in the private sector, Carter is assigned to protect a “high value package” – a beautiful whistleblower trying o expose a corrupt military defense contractor. But a heavily armed team of mercenaries has been hired to kill her, along with anyone who gets in their way, and it’s going to take a fearless one-man fighting machine to stop them. Co-starring WWE Diva Summer Rae in her feature film debut, The Marine 4: Moving Target is locked and loaded with explosive action from start to finish! 

The Film 

The Marine 4: Moving Target is the FOURTH film in the franchise and it stars WWE star Mike “The Miz” Mizanin as former United States Marine Jake Carter. This is Mizanin’s second outing as Jake Carter – he was in The Marine 3: Homefront. I should also mention that I have not seen any of The Marine films outside of this one.  The first film featured John Cena and part two starred Ted DiBiase Jr. I also don’t watch WWE or wrestling in general, so the main cast of characters of this franchise is not familiar to me.

In The Marine 4 Jake has gone into the private sector meaning that he is now working for the U.S. government in protecting high value targets. In this instance he and his security detail have to protect a high value target that has information that would bring down many top agency all over the world. Her name is Olivia Tannis (Melissa Roxburgh) and she is basically a very fiery and tenacious version of Eric Snowden.

It all goes downhill when Jake and Melissa’s security detail are hit hard by a group of mercenaries who want to kill Olivia and anyone who stands in their way. Unbeknownst to them Jake has a very complex set of skills that he can demo out for the group as they continuously try to kill them both. This being a WWE produced film I should also mention that Summer Rae makes an appearance as part of the mercenary crew.

Let’s not get it twisted here. The fancy set up and not-so-familiar faces (to me, anyways) can’t really elevate the material presented past a sloppy direct-to-video vibe. Yes, in fact, this is a direct-to-video feature and it’s not a very good one. The acting is horrible and the story is pretty awful. For being such a high valued packaged Olivia the whistleblower doesn’t seem to know a whole lot and Jake has to just do his job in protecting her by looking mean all the time. Summer Rae is a practically a mute but looks good in her outfit and can fire different types of guns and she does that very well.

Another thing that bugged me was the hand-to-hand combat scenes. The fight choreography just seemed sloppy to me. I mentioned earlier that I don’t watch wrestling. I should take that back and say that have not watched wrestling since about 1999. In watching the fight scenes in The Marine 4 the hits are overly telegraphed. This is a film where one can yell cut and fix the hit, etc., it’s not like it’s at a live event where you can fudge a hit. The fudging of hits was pretty evident in The Marine 4.

Since we’re at number four in the series I don’t doubt there will be another one in the near further, because it seems that they can crank these out with WWE talent in a cookie-cutter fashion and still sell units. Hey, WWE fans are extremely loyal to the talent and that’s great. It also serves as stepping stones to the cast/crew working on the films but I just wished that they would invest a bit more on a decent script. I know I’m probably going to repeat myself at the end of the review but The Marine 4: Moving Target is for fans only.

Video 

Encoding: AVC/MPEG-4

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1

Clarity/Detail: The Marine 4 was shot on the digital side of the spectrum and it looks very clean, with a nice grain structure throughout. Contrast and sharpness levels are nicely balanced out and I did not see any instances of post production tinkering. No lens flares were harmed in the making of this project.

Depth: The film looks very good and the Blu-ray takes advantage of the film’s locations in Canada. The skies are gloomy and the landscape is groovy – my kind of environment.

Black Levels: I did not notice any hints of crush – everything looked nice and balanced out.

Color Reproduction: The outdoor scenery really benefit from the high definition transfer – the green(s) in the woods just come to life as do the outfits the mercenary team ear, because it’s so green. This is a compliment and not a knock.

Flesh Tones: Flesh tones are accurate and stay that way throughout the film.

Noise/Artifacts: I did notice some very light noise in some scenes but nothing that would make the final film unwatchable in terms of quality assurance.

 

Audio 

Audio Format(s): English DTS-HD MA 5.1, French DTS 5.1

Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French, Swedish, Norwegian

Dynamics: The Marine 4 on Blu-ray features a lossless 5.1 soundtrack and it’s above average. It won’t necessarily bring the house down but it’s not meant to. It starts off very front driven before it opens up once our characters are running around in the woods. There are scenes that take place indoors and those fare very well – in terms of being able to hear characters talk without the gunfire blasting around.

Low Frequency Extension: The LFE kicks in during scenes of heavy gunfire, explosions, and fighting. The subwoofer did not have any problems handling the lowed bass levels.

Surround Sound Presentation: The rear channels do one a run for their money due to the stray bullets whizzing by and wreaking havoc in the various outdoor setting. Splinters and debris can be heard flying all of over the place and over your head.

Dialogue Reproduction: Dialogue levels are crisp and clear – I did not detect any instances of echo or hiss during playback.

Extras 

The Marine 4: Moving Target is light on extras. It has several featurettes that don’t run for more than 5-6 minutes and this Blu-ray edition does come with a Digital HD copy of the film for your portable devices.

• Firepower (HD) – This is the most interesting of the featurettes included on the Blu-ray, because it details the weaponry used throughout the film. It’s great from a technical standpoint but sucky that it’s only about 5 minutes in length.

• The Franchise (HD) – This short featurette highlights the Marine franchise – it’s rather shocking that we’re already on #4.

• Beauty Is Dangerous (HD) – This featurettes highlights the femme fatales featured in The Marine 4.

• Digital HD UltraViolet Copy – A Digital HD UltraViolet copy of the film.

 

Summary 

I get why they went ahead with a fourth film – they’re cost effective and do make a tidy profit since it caters mostly to the WWE crowd. As far as it being a good or entertaining film – well, it doesn’t really work. Let me clarify: it didn’t work for me on those two levels. The technical specifications on the Blu-ray are fine and the extras are rather light. The Marine 4: Moving Target is definitely FOR FANS only. Everyone else can go ahead and skip it.

 

 

 

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