Brother Against Brother

Let us never doubt the charismatic power of Chris Pine. The actor, who surged to fame with his turn as James Kirk in the rebooted Star Trek, has been a consistent and reliable a presence in theaters ever since. His turns in Into the Woods, Wonder Woman, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves have been widely praised, and even when the movies he's been in haven't been the best, such as Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, he was still very watchable in his roles.

I bring this up because 2012's This Means War is not some kind of forgotten Chris Pine classic. It's a pretty mediocre rom-com with some pretty questionable gender politics at play. It has an affable cast with Chris Pine, Tom hardy, and Reese Witherspoon, and you could legitimately see how, with the right material, this could have been a winning film. This Means War is not the right material. It's a bad story produced by a mediocre director (sorry all your McG fans), and the only thing that really saves it is Chris Pine and his winning smile. Hell, the only reason I even bothered watching it was because I saw it in the dust bin that is the HuluOriginally created as a joint streaming service between the major U.S. broadcast networks, Hulu has grown to be a solid alternative to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, even as it learns harder on its collection of shows from Fox and FX since Disney purchased a majority stake in the service. "we randomly got this in so you may as well watch it" selections and Chris Pine was on the cover. He's watchable, this film barely is.

This Means War (in which the line "this means war!" is never actually said) focuses on two best friends, Franklin "FDR" Foster (Pine) and Tuck Hansen (Hardy). The two have been friends for decades, basically growing as close as brothers. They both work for the CIA, handling missions together, and they're an effective (if sometimes over the top) team. Unfortunately the missions we first witness from them goes south; it's supposed to be a low-key observation mission with maybe a little snatch-and-grab, but it turns into a shooting gallery when their targets, international criminals Karl Heinrich (Til Schweiger) and brother Jonas, catch wind of their presence. Jonas dies in the ensuing battle, but Karl escapes, vowing revenge on the two agents.

Back home, FDR and Tuck are grounded, forced to ride their desks while the fallout from their botched mission blows over. This gives Tuck time to finally get out there and find someone after once again getting rejected by his ex-wife, Katie (Abigail Spencer). Putting himself out on a dating site, Tuck meets up with workaholic Lauren Scott (Reese Witherspoon), and the two hit it off. But after the date, Lauren heads to a video store and bumps into FDR, who doesn't realize she was Tuck's date. He asks Lauren out, and she eventually, begrudgingly agrees. This leaves both men dating the same women, both knowing the other is vying for her affections, and they'll use every resource of the CIA to do it. It's a war, of a sort, that pits brother against brother for the love of a woman.

Let's start things off by noting that the fate for this relationship is pretty obvious from the start (and sorry for anyone that doesn't want spoilers for a largely forgotten Chris Pine rom-com from 11 years ago). Tuck has his ex-wife, Katie, who he's clearly still crazy about, while FDR just cycles through women. Lauren is the first woman FDR has ever really cared about, and that's pretty obvious from their first real date. Anyone that can do basic math, and basic script reading, can already tell that Tuck will get back with Katie after Lauren chooses FDR. There's no real question about this, from a basic structure point, and that's before we even get into the way the film handles their characters.

See, FDR gets an actual arc. He starts off as a womanizer, a club boy just making the rounds, but he can find a way to grow and mature and actually commit to a woman. Tuck, by contrast, has already grown. He's a kind and sensitive man just looking for the right woman after Ms. Right dumped him because he couldn't tell her what he really did for a living (his ex-wife and his son both think he's a travel agent). He already knows who he is and who he wants to be, so there's no real potential for growth for him. Lauren has room to grow as she doesn't know what she wants from a relationship and is, in fact, just getting over a bad break up herself, so that pretty clearly indicates who will do what and where they'll go. Those with growth are going to get the happier ending.

It doesn't help that Tuck is a thinly written character. His major traits are that he works for the CIA, that he's British, and that he's sensitive. Contrast that with FDR who likes to party, sleeps around, drinks, is a cad, makes sexy eyes at every woman he sees, but also finds himself able to fall for this woman, discovers he loves dogs, has a family in town that he can take Lauren to meet... One of these men is a fully fleshed out protagonist and the other is a co-star at best, that affable friend there for humor and fun. Tuck is FDR's best friend, much in the same way that Lauren has Trish (Chelsea Handler), her best friend, who also doesn't have an arc because she's really just there to support Lauren.

Frankly, I feel bad for Tuck in this film because he's the motivating factor that gets everything off the ground. He goes to look for a girl, finds Lauren, and then gets a lot of scenes of dating her but never really gets to prove his worth. When he gets to go back to his ex-wife (who is even more thinly sketched than Tuck himself), it feels like a pity prize. "The real story for you was the friends you didn't make along the way, buddy. No go back to your cast offs and let the real adults have some fun." Tuck deserved better, and by that I really mean Katie deserved better in this film so that she and Tuck could have had real arcs together instead of just being consolation prizes for each other.

But, of course, then we get into the tricky matter of having CIA agents do, well, everything they do in this film. Once both men realize they've going after the same woman, they make a gentlemen's agreement to play fair and let the best man win. Then, almost immediately, they start abusing the tech of the CIA to gain an upper hand in the competition. They run unauthorized background checks on Lauren, plant bugs around her house, use surveillance drones, and go to greater and great lengths to hack into this poor woman's life. Not once are they called out for it, nor do they suffer any repercussions for their actions. It's all just shrugged off and the film moves on like they didn't do anything wrong.

At the same time, the very premise of this film is questionable. These two men are like brothers. Hell, FDR's grandmother claims Tuck as one of her own. These two men, with that close a relationship, likely never would be on any missions together because, clearly, they'd be compromised if ever their partner were in danger. "Let us go or I shoot your brother," will always end with the terrorists getting away. Plus, should Tuck even be a CIA agent. He's British enough that he still speaks with an accent, and I question if the CIA would even let him into their ranks, let alone putting him in a managerial position with access to high-classification-level intel. They cast Hardy in the film because he's handsome and a bankable star, sure, but that does cause issues within the setup of the movie that the film just never addresses.

But then the film really isn't smart enough to address any of the issues in this problematic story. It just tries to breeze by as if invasion of privacy and government0funded stalking are perfectly okay. And it very nearly gets away with it because Pine and Hardy and Witherspoon are very charismatic actors. It can almost paper over all the damage this story would do to the lives of these three people, but not enough that I couldn't stop, time and again, and question just what the hell I was watching.

The film is amusing in places and has very likable leads, but end of the day this is low-rent garbage. The film makes as much hay as it can from its leads, but that doesn't stop it from being a bad film. A pretty bad film, but a bad film all the same.