Jarhead 3: The Siege (2016)

A group of Marines must protect a US Embassy in the Middle East when it suddenly comes under attack from enemy forces. Jarhead 3: The Siege is another fun and quite action packed sequel to the disappointing Jarhead (2005). It also stars Scott Adkins which most of the time that's actually a pretty good thing although he is not the main protagonist. The acting was pretty good, the action very good and the storyline quite interesting and cool, definitely check it out when you can you won't regret it it's actually better than it gets credit. (8/10)

It could have been an 80s Movie. We have our loose Gun/Action Hero, we have our blond hottie that will run around with a gun and fihgt like the bigguys and we have our Villain running around always angry.The acting is between mediocre acceptable and bad but not awful. The technical aspects are partly not even bad. Seem like there was some serious training involved.Sadly all that seems to be forgotten when it comes to the actual gunbattles. At least they change sometimes a magazine but it is still those endless rapidfire gunbattles with 30 round mags that hold 200 bullets. And while the good guys got easy overrun in an heavyguarded and well defended Embassy and die like flys, at the end it turns around. While having close to no cover, outgunned, out manned the terrorists drop like flys. So the action part is 80s style, but still try to be serious like a modern Warmovie, trys but fails to be realistic. It even has some slightly critic undertone about politics and agenda of the government, same time it ends up in a bug hurra marines are the best. And of course our Loose Gun turns out to be the superhero that saves the day...All in all a weird mixture, not really entertaining but also not too boring, something you shouldn't think when you see it and you wont after you did.

It's originally a delight to see B-movie with more emphasis on realism of marine life than merely blasting guns. Scott Adkins looks better in acting department too as he plays the high rank officer and there's good effort to develop intense scene from military part. However, it soon crumbles with poor Jason Bourne imitation for shady opt, uncomfortable missed machismo and a particularly strange silly man of supporting character.The first misfit comes in the form of Blake, the documentary guy. He sticks out like a sore thumb in every scene, throwing needless jokes and ruining the high octane sequence. If there is a need for comic relief, then it has to be done with more finesse and less unsavory method. The film gives almost half of its runtime to create a sense of dread, yet this nagging character singlehandedly ruins it, even more so when the other actors trying to deliver a more serious performance.Scott Adkins is more comfortable here, he has good mentor-student relationship with Albright (Charlie Weber), the protagonist. The rest of the squad are decent as well. Then, it suddenly introduces a tough female character who may or may not be a spy, in Top Gun-esque bantering. There's also mandatory nationalism angle, which is not entirely bad, but seems shoehorned in as emotional bait.After halfway point the movie pushes the shooting to the maximum volume, gunning for most bullets shot per minute. It's the usual gunslinger military stuff, which is admittedly expected. Nothing too grand, although there are some oddities like people running away from covers and even though Scott Adkins is here, this is not martial art movie, so those expecting intricate hand-to-hand combat might be disappointed."Jarhead 3" is the expected cinematic rendition of soldiers filled with testosterone and gunpowder, and also unfortunately a few out-of-elements ridiculous antics.

I often wondered why some actually not bad or even serious movies would insert a totally unnecessary cast, a comic-relief like jerk in the screenplays to completely ridicule and ruin them. The worst outcome is putting such clown figures in an action movie. We had seen Bruce Lee's martial art Kung-Fu movies stupidly arranged such totally unnecessary and inappropriate role and degenerated those supposedly suspenseful action movies into not quite serious enough ones. This "Jarhed 3" was another victim by such stupid arrangement in its screenplay, allowing a totally unnecessary character, Blake, played by the annoying Filipino American, Dante Basco, to mess up with and almost ruined it soon as this jerk-like guy holding a camcorder, appeared on the screen.I am not so sure about the connections between the screenplay writer(s), the director, or even the executive producer(s) with Dante Basco, but one thing I could definitely assure is this sore-thumb like character completely torpedoed this, by general standard, not too bad, albeit quite serious action TV movie. Of course, there are many flaws and loopholes inherited from the screenplay's scenario and plot, but except this jerk-like stand-alone Blake character, all the other players did their jobs quite seriously. The clown character in a serious U.S. Embassy is not just possible but unthinkable, that stupid arrangement simply and totally ruined the believability of this movie, even there were many settings, furniture, bullet-proof windows and glasses were so vividly and realistically destroyed.The Chinese got an old saying to describe such inappropriate careless arrangement that doomed the outcome: "A whole well-prepared pot of porridge is ruin by just one piece of small rat dropping", Blake/Dante Basco, is indeed that piece of rat dropping.