Forced to squander their considerable charisma, Chris Pine, Tom Hardy, and Reese Witherspoon play three corners of a romantic triangle, all hard-working professionals who have trouble meeting people on the side. When Hardy meets Witherspoon, a go-getting product-tester, on an online dating site, he allows his CIA partner Pine to hang out at a nearby video store during their first date. Of course, Witherspoon and Pine just happen to meet up independently of Hardy, and they hit it off, leading Witherspoon into the dilemma of dating two guys at once, and leaving Pine and Hardy competing for the same woman. In an effort to get information about Witherspoon’s likes and dislikes—and to monitor each other’s progress in rounding the proverbial bases—the guys install various bugs, hidden cameras, and tracking devices as if she were in a terrorist sleeper cell.
There’s a lot of intelligence-gathering in This Means War, which usually involves Pine or Hardy and a group of other men clustering around a monitor while Witherspoon frets and Chelsea Handler, as her married confidant, turns her every worry into a smutty one-liner. Scenes of the guys applying the things they’ve learned about Witherspoon on their dates—taking her to see Gustav Klimt paintings or adopting a dog—smack of Bill Murray wooing Andie MacDowell in Groundhog Day. But the crucial difference is that Murray had no choice but to relive the same day over and over again; Pine and Hardy have the choice not to be invasive creeps. They, and the movie, just don’t see the problem with it.
For thoughts on, and a place to discuss, plot details not talked about in this review, visit This Means War's Spoiler Space.
