This Means War — Skimming the Surface0

Written by Beatrice Decruz

“Falling is the best part.” ~ FDR Foster, “This Means War”

You may either fall for this light-hearted roman­tic com­edy or think that it falls short of expectations.

Directed by McG, the movie is a love tri­an­gle and an under­cover spy story that revolves around 2 CIA part­ners and life-long best friends FDR Foster (Chris Pine) and Tuck Henson (Tom Hardy), who have set their eyes on Lauren Scott (Reese Witherspoon), and they enter a war of love, try­ing to tug at her heart­strings. Ambitious career woman Lauren, finds her­self torn between the suave American, blue-eyed FDR and the sweet, British gen­tle­man Tuck, and to decide on the right man, she dates the gen­tle­men simul­ta­ne­ously. From hav­ing fun at a paint­ball shoot­ing arena with Tuck, to an extrav­a­gant gift paint­ing of Lauren’s favorite artist from FDR, your funny bone will be tick­led and the hearts of girls will melt as the agents dis­play their car­ing and also tough side while they take out the bad guys. However, power in author­i­ties and pri­vacy are breached as the agents make use of CIA resources to spy on each oth­ers’ advances towards Lauren.

Rated PG-13, this movie may seem to be a sim­ple action and roman­tic com­edy but the under­ly­ing val­ues por­trayed made me sit up straight in my chair.
Supposedly as best bud­dies, FDR and Tuck made a gentlemen’s agree­ment that,

1. They will def­i­nitely not let this rivalry for Lauren’s heart; get in the way of their friendship.

2. No phys­i­cal con­tact with Lauren until she has made up her mind.

3. No spy­ing on each other and to have trust in their friendship.

But this agree­ment was for­gone when one could not bear the intense curios­ity while the other is out with Lauren, and both stepped in by plant­ing bugs, and deploy­ing sur­veil­lance teams, claim­ing that the sit­u­a­tion called for a red alert. Does this mean that all that “I’ve got your back cov­ered” and “I’ll take a bul­let for you” talk gets thrown out of the win­dow the moment a woman comes into the pic­ture? It’s equiv­a­lent to say­ing that you can’t even trust your best friend. Well, at least where a woman is con­cerned… And where does this leave us? In a con­stant state of wari­ness and fear.
On the other hand, there’s also the breach of pri­vacy and the mis­use of author­ity. With power comes respon­si­bil­ity. These two men, unlike when out on a CIA assigned mis­sion, acted like inse­cure teenagers due to the lack of trust in each other. To sat­isfy their curios­ity, they crossed bound­aries by invad­ing Lauren’s pri­vacy with­out her knowl­edge. Isn’t it a won­der that they weren’t kicked out of CIA after vio­la­tion of protocol?

Sure, Lauren had to go on dates with the guys to know them bet­ter and to help in her decision-making. However, when her close friend, Trish (Chelsea Handler), sug­gested that Lauren sleeps with them and the best in bed should be her ulti­mate choice, it got me wor­ry­ing about the impact it may have on teens. Comparing the open cul­ture in America to Singapore’s con­ser­v­a­tive but fast-learning soci­ety, teens may start to think and even­tu­ally con­sider that hav­ing sex is part of dat­ing and it can help to decide whether the per­son is right for you. With voyeuris­tic under­tones injected for humor, I also cringe at the thought that teens may actu­ally start cre­at­ing a men­tal list of what-to-do and what-to-say on a date, another wor­ri­some thought when I think about my future dat­ing prospects…

To top it all, as Lauren frets over which guy to pick, FDR and Tuck can be seen punch­ing each other’s faces in. And after releas­ing their anger in this phys­i­cal com­bat, slight ten­sion is released and they worked together to save Lauren from the evil clutches of the neme­sis. The ques­tion I want to raise is whether it is nec­es­sary to beat the life out of each other to release ten­sion? Isn’t it a sub­tle impli­ca­tion that vio­lence can be a solu­tion? Action sure seems to speak louder than words since the agents could only have a decent con­ver­sa­tion after the fight.

Although it was nei­ther a nail-biting nor heart-gripping movie that will have you on the edge of your chair, nonethe­less, “This Means War” makes as good frothy enter­tain­ment for those on a date and can even help one get over the stress and wor­ries of a day if, you take every­thing on the surface.