What would happen if a group of eight-year-olds got together and wrote their vision of the perfect action movie?

Probably something like “12 Rounds,” featuring John Cena, a WWE wrestler turned actor.

Cena stars as Danny Fisher, a straight-shooting but tough cop in New Orleans.

Fisher is first introduced in a by-the-numbers scene in which he asks his pretty girlfriend where his badge is, using the well worn line “They give you two things when you’re a cop-a gun and a badge. I have my gun…where’s my badge?” Riveting.

Danny finds his badge and jumps into a squad car with his partner Hank, who plays the stereotypical “goofy” partner who prefers to talk about all the women he’s had than focus on his job.

The two are called in to help locate and bring in Miles Jackson (played by Aidan Gillen), an international arms dealer who has done all sorts of nasty stuff around the world.

Following a ludicrous chase scene, Danny has Miles and his girlfriend at gun point.

Miles tells his girlfriend to run, and she does…straight into an oncoming car, killing her.

Miles gets Danny’s name and promises he will remember his name forever.

A year later Danny and Hank have made detective status for capturing Miles.

One day Danny gets a phone call and it’s Miles, telling him that he’s broken out of prison and that it’s been a year to the day since Miles lost what he loved the most.

As payback, he’s going to take from Danny what he loves most-his girlfriend Molly, played by Ashley Scott.

He tells Danny he has 12 challenges, or “rounds” to complete if he wants to get her back.

What follows is the largest collection of action movie clichés since “Rush Hour”.

The scenes that follow could have been exciting, but instead director Renny Harlin decides to put no variation on the action.

The result is a mess of one awful chase scene after the other, with horrible acting from Cena and Gillen.

Cena, a relative newcomer to the world of film, would have done well to stay in the world of wrestling.

He simply doesn’t have the same charisma as fellow ex-wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and the movie suffers for it.

Gillen tries to ham it up as the villain, but comes off as someone trying to do their best impression of past brainy villains (most notably Hans Gruber from Die Hard).

At one point, he makes a malevolent phone call to Danny while sitting in a cable car and eating ice cream. There is nothing even remotely villainous about ice cream. Gillen’s performance didn’t change this.

In the end, “12 Rounds” is just an unnecessary re-hash of past action movies, with nothing new to offer and terrible acting all around.

Save your eight bucks for something more enriching and entertaining like the family-friendly film ‘Monsters vs Aliens’ also out this week.

Or, you could buy eight packs of marshmallow Peeps and put them in the microwave to watch them explode. Either option is far more entertaining than this crapfest.