This Means War (review)

How do you view the Central Intelligence Agency? Are there only super secret undercover agents going out on dangerous missions? Is there steadfast but loyal staff who manages to pull intel from discarded papers, old bank receipts and computer logs? Or are there inquisitive people who study maps and satellite images to find terrorist cells?

If you get your views from Hollywood (Heaven Forbid!), then you probably view the CIA as a bureaucrat heavy, dysfunctional, incompetent, underhanded, corrupt institution. Hollywood also tells us tat that is filled with dishonest, narcissistic, borderline psycho type super agents that would rather shoot first and interrogate later.

With movies going back to ‘Three Days of the Condor’, to ‘Bourne Supremacy’, to the recent ‘Safe House’, the CIA never seems to get a fair shake. And so it is with ‘This Means War’, the very uneven comedy that pits two CIA agents against each other to get the affection of woman. The two agents are a team, and the focus on the girl is making both of them do crazy and wild things. They use the resources of the agency to try and outmaneuver the other guy, and the full-tilt war is fought over her affections. Yeah, right!

Lauren Scott (Reese Witherspoon) is the single lady in question. She is wrapped up in her career running a consumer testing company. Her married best friend Trish (Chelsea Handler) is after her to date and get with a guy (any guy) because, you know, the clock is ticking and Lauren should join Trish in being a bad parent. Trish signs Laruen up on an online dating site. Soon, she gets an inquiry from Tuck (Tom Hardy).

Tuck works for the CIA as a field agent, along with his best friend FDR (Chris Pine). They always go out in the field together to get the bad guys. On the latest mission, they caused the death of a drug kingpin’s brother. Now the kingpin Heinrich (Til Schweiger) is coming after them. Tuck does the online dating thing and meets up with Lauren. He uses his cover story (he is a travel agent) to explain why he goes on long trips on a short notice. Tuck was also married once and has a young son. And since he works for the CIA, why does he have a British accent?

FDR (who comes up with these names?) is single and attractive, and he has many women in his life. But none that he would take home to his family. He knows that Tuck will be meeting the woman (Lauren) from the dating site, and he waits in a video rental store. Video rental store? In which decade is this movie set? FDR then happens to meet Lauren, after Lauren has met with Tuck. Can you see where this is going? FDR claims that he is a cruise ship captain (his lame cover story) when he does not look a day over 30.

So then both of the guys decide to go after Lauren. They use all the super secret spy stuff at their disposal to help them. They bug her apartment and put min-camera everywhere. They run background checks on her to find out what food she likes and what art works that she appreciates. They both attempt to persuade her to fall in love, when she does not know that they know each other and are fighting over her.

Pretty soon, Heinrich catches up to them and finds out that they each have a weakness. They are both falling for the same girl. So Heinrich decides to kidnap Lauren and Trish to get FDR and Tuck. In the end, it turns out that Lauren’s work at the consumer testing agency has more of a bearing on the outcome than the fact the two guys work at another type of agency.

This is all foolishness and frolic. There is nothing that resembles real dialog between real people. The setup is lame, but that is true for many other movies, too. Just the fact that they have some pretty good talent, and then do nothing with that talent, well that could send a person to war!