12 Rounds will open on March 25

Wrestling star John Cena faces an unlikely match in the upcoming movie 12 Rounds where it pits him with a deadly international criminal Miles Jackson (played by Aidan Gillen). Cena plays Danny Fisher in the movie where he must face down a booby-trapped elevator, stop a cable train from crashing, plummet out from a helicopter high above the city and engage in a high-speed chase through the city of New Orleans to save his girl Molly (Ashley Scott) from the revenge-seeking Miles. As Miles toys with Danny, innocent citizens are threatened.

To play the villainous Miles, the filmmakers cast Aiden Gillen. Trained on the stage, Gillen had recently received acclaim for his work in HBO's The Wire, as the duplicitous Mayor Thomas Carcetti. "Aidan feels smarter than us. When he plays Miles, he feels like someone who simply could sit in a room with you and tell you everything that's wrong with you in five minutes," says McLaughlin. "And I think that's what makes for a good villain, a guy who seems like he's in control of the situation—even if a gun is pointed at his head."

The fact that Cena is significantly taller and bigger than Gillen didn't diminish Gillen's/Miles' power and sense of control. "I didn't think about the disparity in size," says Gillen. "Miles has his own kind of slick and lethal moves that challenge Danny in the film's climax." Adds director Renny Harlin: "Aiden plays Miles with a delicious attention to detail and with colorful nuances. He makes it a very powerful character. You could put John and Aiden next to each other and think John could kill him with one punch. But it's not always about that in real life, and I think that difference [in height and size] between them really plays well in the film."

For John Cena, 12 Rounds is more than another role; it's his initiation to become an action movie star. Moreover, the film's Danny Fisher is the type of action hero that Cena enjoyed watching, as a fan of the genre. "The ‘80s was the era of the ‘everyman' hero," Cena explains. "And there hasn't been that style of hero since then. Guys like Bruce Willis in Die Hard proved that an everyday person can be an action hero. If I'm even considered in that club, I'm definitely off to a great start."


Aidan Gillen has worked extensively in film, television and theatre since the late eighties—in Dublin, London and, now, the U.S. He starred in the independent feature Buddy Boy (2000), and appeared on Broadway in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, which earned him a 2004 Tony® award nomination. Most notably, he played politician, Tommy Carcetti for three seasons on HBO's highly acclaimed series The Wire.

Gillen's credits include lead roles in the award winning BBC film Safe, Queer as Folk (receiving a BAFTA nomination for best actor), Terry George's debut film Some Mother's Son, the motion picture and theater productions of Jez Butterworth's Mojo (1999), the film Shanghai Knights with Jackie Chan (2004), The Final Curtain with Peter O'Toole, and Circle of Friends.

12 Rounds will open this Wednesday, March 25, in Philippine theaters from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.