A police officer returns to duty after recovering from a gun shot wound to discover incriminating evidence of illegal activities against those closest to him. He quickly finds himself trapped inside his own precinct, hunted and in search of the truth, as the crooked cops stop at nothing to recover the evidence......John Cena and WWE have a lot to answer for. Between the two of them, they have taken two perfectly passable B-movie action flicks, and turned them into a monster that won't give up the Die Hard ghost.The sequels to The Marine, are nothing more than Die Hard wannabe shlockfests, and in turn, this franchise is becoming the same monster.But what's the twist here? Why, the twelve rounds are referring to the number of bullets that Dean Ambrose has in his gun. Because a good cop doesn't need more than twelve bullets in a Die Hard situation......eat that Bruce.And what does become clear very soon into the film, is that this movie wasn't supposed to be a sequel, the makers just saw the finished product, felt their heart sink, and tagged on the franchise name.The plot and the narrative, are perfectly acceptable and a pretty good concept, Cop comes back to work after being traumatised, colleagues are planning a robbery, blame their killing of other cops on the returning cops mental health state, thus leaving him with having to clear his name and quip really poor, incoherent one liners.It's not a terrible film by any means, it's just so boring and mundane, and Ambrose should make the most of this movie, because I feel he won't be getting many more movie offers soon. At least he's got his wrestling to fall back on.So for the rest of the film we have Ambrose hiding from a villain who is really doing his best to be Michael Jai White and killing cops when Ambrose won't move into the view of the CCTV, the bloke from Scary Movie looking really old and sweaty, and obviously your token police outside shouting 'we're going in'.It all ends with a silly twist, and it doesn't deliver anything new or surprising.Well it did surprise me when I found out Ambrose is only 29. He looks well into his forties.Live Hard.....Die Hard......

My quick rating - 5,2/10. Another slightly above average action movie starring a WWE superstar, this time Dean Ambrose. I will say that using him for the main was a good call since he isn't the muscle bound type character such as Cena and Orton were in the previous films. For being his first acting role, he did an adequate job and delivered his one- liners pretty well (yet some were not that funny no matter who said them) The action was edited well so the viewers don't lose track with too much jerky camera work (which seems to be more the norm in action films as of late). This story is more a use of "12 rounds" as in shots left in the gun, not 12 rounds as in a cat and mouse game, but that is OK, at least it was different. Overall, a good addition to the WWE library that did not raise the bar at all, but also did not lower it in the slightest either. Funny thing, I went back to my database and I gave the first one a 5.3 and the second one a 5.1 so at least they are being consistent.

There are some glaringly obvious plot issues with this movie. The re-instated police officer, who's partner was killed, uncovers evidence of foul play. Immediately upon doing so, the perpetrator of said foul play and corruption realizes that he has the evidence and attacks him while he is still in the police station. The antagonist shuts off cell and phone communication and disables the network. He communicates with the outside using radio, the same radio which he communicates with his fellow perpetrators. In addition, the main character either has an IQ of 50 or the writer lacks imagination. At one point the antagonist finds himself in the armory and he grabs a shield with 6 or 7 bullets left whilst being out-gunned. Even a moron, with far below the intelligence required to pass a police competency test, would have gone for some artillery. He communicates on a cell phone to a potential ally from the roof, yet never stops to say "Hey, I am throwing the flash drive down to you", something that would've removed the motivation for the whole thing. Even the basic premise, the corrupt cop explaining that he has disabled communications and put the building on lock down, makes zero damn sense in any real situation. Why would disabling cellular communication help in apprehending a cop suffering from PTSD that had gone on a killing spree. A rating of 4 is based upon the fact that the movie is still entertaining, as long as you can imagine for a second that the multiple cameras in the police station are not recording everything that is happening and that they wouldn't be reviewed after the incident... and everything else.

I remember going to see the original 12 Rounds, starring John Cena a long long time ago. Could not tell you how this movie connects with the original, except for the fact that they are both made by WWE studios, who tends to cast a new lead with all their sequels like the Marine, that also had John Cena in the league. I have no idea who Dean Ambrose is and after seeing his lack luster performance, I care not to know. The movie gave him a crap load of one- liners that kept lowering the already low quality of the movie every time he spits one out . The movie had a philosophy about a good cop only needing 12 rounds in his gun to get the job done, which was delivered like crap with Ambrose in the lead. I did enjoy the guy who played the villain. He had potential of being a memorable action movie villain but this movie is too forgettable for that to happen.Overall it's very bland.