Movie review: This Means War

This Means War offers little entertainment in either the spy or romance arena.

It’s easy to see what the filmmakers were going for with This Means War. The spy genre is relatively hot these days, so why not mix some international intrigue with a little romance? But instead of having the spy (or spies in this case) go after a femme fatale type, the object of their affections is your everyday, down-on-her-love woman who just happens to cross paths with our protagonists. The only problem is that the gap between fun idea and actually executing it can sometimes be too big to manage.

Tuck (Tom Hardy) and FDR (Chris Pine) are the spies in question, partners in the CIA. Tuck, despite appearances, is actually a lovelorn individual, unlike FDR, who is your prototypical ladies man. Tuck decides to put himself out there on a dating website, right around the same time that Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) has a profile unwittingly put up by her best friend Trish (Chelsea Handler). When their first date also leads to a chance meeting between Lauren and FDR, a rivalry is born, one that will involve more than a few of the CIA’s resources.

This Means War owes a debt of gratitude to films like True Lies and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (which co-writer Simon Kinberg also wrote). Unlike those films, however, This Means War thinks it’s a lot more clever than it actually is. Most of the film is spent with Tuck and FDR trying to one-up the other in the romance department, using all the spy skills they’ve cultivated, while Lauren remains completely oblivious. After a while, though, her cluelessness becomes baffling, especially since Tuck and FDR lean more toward Keystone Kops than James Bond.

This handshake is not as congenial as it may appear.

The film goes off the “believable” tracks early on, but director McG and writers Kinberg and Timothy Dowling still feel the need to keep a superfluous subplot involving a terrorist going so that they can pay more than lip service to Tuck and FDR's actual jobs. Like almost everything else in the film, that’s a mistake, as it only serves to call more attention to the complete lack of any substantive plot material. Instead, what the audience is given is just a series increasingly outrageous events, each one more ludicrous than the next.

The sole saving grace of This Means War is the charms of its actors. Witherspoon, Hardy, and Pine each have a natural attractiveness to them, both in the looks and demeanor, that rescues preposterous situations and renders them just slightly ridiculous. Most of the film is supposed to be funny, only it rarely is; the few times that it does hit home is solely due to the efforts of the main trio, and nothing else. Handler, with her forced sexual innuendo shtick, feels completely out of place here.

The best that Hollywood could muster this year for Valentine’s Day releases is the manipulative The Vow and This Means War, which offers little entertainment in either the spy or romance arena. Do yourself a favor and go rent a winner like Crazy, Stupid, Love instead.

For showtimes for This Means War, click here.