THE MARINE 3: HOME FRONT Review: Director Scott Wiper and Mike “The Miz” Mizanin Score the Win

THE MARINE 3: HOMEFRONT, from WWE Studios and FOX Home Entertainment, is the third installment in the successful THE MARINE franchise and brings World Wrestling Entertainment star MikeThe MizMizanin to the big screen.

Directed by Scott Wiper THE MARINE 3: HOMEFRONT also stars Ashley Bell, Neal McDonough, Michael Eklund, Camille Sullivan, Jeffrey Ballard and Jared Keeso and is produced by Marc Bienstock, Richard Lowell, Michael Luisis and Chris Foss and written by Wiper and Declan O’Brien.

THE MARINE 3: HOMEFRONT opens with homage to the U.S. Marines, with a collage of moments from boot camp through global missions with voice over from Sgt. Jake Carter/Mizanin. These scenes provide the audience with the back story of Jake Carter’s humble beginnings and set a patriotic tone.

Far from Mr. Nice Guy, Jake Carter is a Special Forces combat trained marine, with instincts to match. Returning to his small hometown on leave, he is met at the bus stop by his childhood friend, who is now the Sheriff, played by Jared Kesso and while driving him home fills him in on all the details of local life and of course, the happenings of his two sisters Lilly and Amanda, played by Ashley Bell and Camille Sullivan.

THE MARINE 3: HOMEFRONT stays true to the franchise roots, of allegiance and patriotism above all, and is an action packed sequel. MARINE 3 introduces the rise of the homegrown terrorist organization, led by the multi-talented Neal McDonough and Michael Eklund, spawned from a disgruntled society and the economic meltdown.

Fighting the modern day militia the by the books FB, outmanned and outgunned, in a show of force take heavy losses and in pride and arrogance refuses civilian assistance even from a Special Forces active duty marine.  With hostages, including Lilly/Bell and Darren/Ballard, Carter finds himself drawn into the gunfight to rescue his sister and prevent an ever greater catastrophe.  

Having the opportunity to participate in the recent THE MARINE HOMEFRONT 3 Press Day attended by Director Scott Wiper, who was kind enough to answer press questions before the “official” start, Mike “The Miz” Mizanin and Ashley Bell the following is an excerpt.

Janet Walker:  Mike, Scott said earlier you had twenty days to shoot what were some of the challenges you faced over those twenty days?

Mike Mizanin: You mean other than the fact that the boat got condemned two days after filming?  Or the fact that we got flooded out and we had to have boats bring the people and crew out and him [Director Scott Wiper] going ‘We have to get this shot, we have to get this shot!’ And the daylight ending and then we had like twelve hours and they have, I guess, twelve hours  we’re only allowed to work and so we can’t go over because of the budget and we can’t go over budget we can’t do that.

And so it was literally like, it was like him [Wiper] running to the next scene, saying ‘Okay we’ve got to do this. Okay put more blood on him, put more blood on him’ And then me being soaked in blood and if I’d take off my shirt you could still see the shirt because of the blood. I mean, he caked me in this corn syrup. I was sticky all the time and then I would have to change and get it all off and I was still red because of all corn syrup.

Scott Wiper: The realities of filmmaking are we had much less than MARINE 1 and MARINE 2 and we had to use gorilla techniques and my theory was just keep it gritty. Like in Aikido, use your enemy’s force to help you. We’re low budget; let’s go gorilla and make this look gritty. Mike and I would be on the phone and we talked, yea, the opening scene in central America, um . .  . they just cut that and those scenes, well, don’t bother learning those I just heard those are going to be cut.

And then, another big change that happened, this awesome gift, Ashley (Bell), did a movie called The Dead which the WWE acquired and because of that connection they learned that for a going to do a movie that was straight to DVD we could get, my goal was to get Rick Might, surround him with great actors and we ended up with Ashley and Neal McDounagh and Michael Eckland. The only catch was the script we had was written for his [Mike’s] daughter to be kidnapped so we’re about ten days out and Mike’s trying to learn his lines and the script changes every five days and he’s like ‘what is going on?’ And I said ‘Mike this is filmmaking learn your character not the lines because, I’ll tell you right now, it’s not your daughter.’

Then they, [Mike and Ashley] got together in LA and finally I’m seeing them on video, and it’s not even uncle and niece it was siblings. So I’ve got 72 hours, the weekend, to re-write the entire script and people are like, ‘Oh don’t worry about it; just change it.’ Don’t you see it changes all the themes the dynamics change.

Ashley Bell: I remember that 72 hour turnaround you had and we talked on Saturday morning and I mean that was the first taste of what this whole process has been. We talked on the phone and he’s [Scott]  like, ‘let’s talk about this character, let’s talk about what you think,’ let’s talk about some of the ideas I have and what I love about Lilly initially was that, even though she is taken hostage she doesn’t give up, she fights. There is a spark in her and a determination to find the air holes and I expressed this to Scott and Scott just ran with and was adding fight scenes and gave me such an incredibly strong character in a hostage character to play. It was really collaborative and even on set it continued to keep on. 

Mike “The Miz” Mizanin and Ashley Bell bring it in this, big gun, action packed triumph from Director Scott Wiper.

The 2 Disc MARINE 3 set contains both a  Blu-Ray High Definition DVD with exclusive insider behind the scenes footage and  bonus features as well as a standard DVD for those of us who haven't upgraded to a Blu-Ray DVD player. We can still enjoying the fast action and suspense of THE MARINE 3: HOMEFRONT!

THE MARINE 3: HOMEFRONT is available on DVD everywhere. Pick up your copy today!

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