GI JOE 2 RETALIATION, 2012
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GI JOE 2 RETALIATION, 2012
Movie Reviews

Director: Jon M. Chu

Stars: Channing Tatum, Dwayne Johnson, Ray Park, Bruce Willis, Byung-hun Lee, Ray Stevenson, Adrianne Palicki, Arnold Vosloo

Review by Joshua Starnes

GI JOE 2: RETALIATION MOVIE TRAILER WATCH

SYNOPSIS:

The G.I. Joe team faces off against Zartan, his accomplices, and the world leaders he has under his influence.

REVIEW:

Oh G.I. Joe, will you never get the respect that Transformers does? Will you always be in their shadow no matter how much slightly, marginally better your movies are? The answer is yes when marginally better is compared to the bottom of the totem pole. With all the good will in the world "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" can only be described as 'harmless' and occasionally pointless. It's barely better than the first Joe and can honestly be called the least stupid film Hasbro has tried to make. But for every good step forward it takes another two back until it can't help but fall over its own feet.

Gone is the bright light, battle suit wearing, under water fighting mise en scene of "Rise of Cobra" and the attempt to make something like a superhero film out of the Joe's. Instead, new director Jon M. Chu ("Step Up 3D") and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick ("Zombieland") have re-imagined the G.I. Joe world as a militaristic techno-thriller with one foot not exactly in the real world but hovering somewhere around it, at least when there are no ninjas around. No force field prisons inside aircraft carriers, or particle accelerators in the depths of Paris here, no sir.

Which isn't to say it's completely divorced from the first. Picking up some unknown time after "Rise of Cobra," Cobra Commander remains safely in jail while the G.I. Joe team polices the world, albeit with less puppet sex. Unfortunately, Cobra's spymaster Zartan also remains safely in disguise as the President of the United States, looking for his Commander and for the chance to put the Joe's down permanently. What are the odds he finds both in the first act?

For all the mixed bag "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" is, there is actually a decent amount of good in there. Almost the entire original cast has been jettisoned replaced with a lot of less well known, cheaper actors and a handful of bigger names that have a chance of actually carrying this stuff. Chief among them is Dwayne Johnson who brings his considerable to charisma fully to bear with just the right mixture of hamminess and toughness this sort of thing calls for. His few scenes with Channing Tatum are the best part of the film and better than most of the action beats. It helps that Channing Tatum has either developed into a much better actor than he was four years ago or the filmmakers have finally recognized his limits and stopped trying to ask him to do things he cannot do.

The world, though smaller, is more realistically developed as well, particularly once the Joe's are betrayed by the evil President and forced to go to ground in order to clear their names before Cobra can engage the next step in its plan. Many of the smaller bit players provide a lot of the "Retaliation's" small (and I do mean small) joys. Walton Goggins is particularly entertaining as a sadistic warden who is tougher than he looks.

And then there are the ninjas.

Just as with the old Joe comics, the ninjas both never seemed to really fit with the rest of the stories being told while simultaneously being the best part of the books. "Retaliation" is firmly in that mold, with the ninja portions of the story having both little to do with anything else and providing the best moment the film has as silent commando Snake Eyes tracks down his old adversary Storm Shadow to a mountain monastery in order to convince him to return to their clan. And when I say convince, I mean beat unconscious. And for those five gloriously silly minutes as the ninjas jump from mountain top to mountain top while sword fighting, nothing else matters.

But that dichotomy is the core of "Retaliation's" failing.

Sure most of the action scenes are extremely well developed and executed with a polished sheen, notably the monastery sequence, but also the initial attack on a secret nuclear base (the only time we actually get to see the G.I. Joe's doing their thing) and crazy mercenary Firefly's (Ray Stevenson) explosive jailbreak to free Cobra Commander.

But they also don't make any sense. Scenes are jammed together one after the other with no real connection, particularly early on as the film cuts back and forth between the Joe's in hiding in the US and Snake Eyes in Japan. No care is made to create even the shadow of a coherent narrative out of these disparate pieces. One entire character, never before encountered, is introduced in a montage and info dump delivered by blind ninja master the RZA, while simultaneously trying to work the ninjas into the main plot. This works exactly as well as it sounds like it would.

Yes, we all know that action films are developed around their sequences first, with the plot then tying those bits together. But sometimes "Retaliation" gives you the feeling the filmmakers forgot about that second part until they were cutting the film together. Yes, that pesky narrative is probably annoying and getting in the way of your stunts and explosions, but you still need it.

As welcome as Johnson is to this new version of G.I. Joe, most of the casting is in fact more like putting the RZA into a movie. The rest of the heroes have been replaced with generally unknown 20-something underwear models. The best that can be said about them is that they don't get to talk much despite being on screen quite a bit.

And to add salt to the wound, this is all done with dialog so inane it will actually set your teeth on edge. The villains, particularly Pryce's evil President, get the worst of it, though Stevenson tries his best to one up him. And Bruce Willis just looks bored, like he's counting the number of shooting days left.

Yeah, it's still better than the first "G.I. Joe." It's lean and silly as opposed to bloated and stupid, which may or may not be an improvement for old school fans of the franchise. For the new viewer unaware there even was a toyline or cartoon in the 80s, it's probably just forgettable.

Jon M. Chu Best of the ARTIST	Dwayne Johnson Best of the ARTIST	Bruce Willis Best of the ARTIST

Channing Tatum Best of the ARTIST	Adrianne Palicki Best of the ARTIST	Ray Stevenson Best of the ARTIST	Joseph Mazzello Best of the ARTIST

Ray Park Best of the ARTIST	Arnold Vosloo Best of the ARTIST	Elodie Yung Best of the ARTIST

Byung-hun Lee Best of the ARTIST	Walton Goggins Best of the ARTIST	Jonathan Pryce Best of the ARTIST

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GI JOE 2 RETALIATION, 2012