When I was growing up, all I wanted was a live action G.I JOE movie. My brothers and I created our own G.I. JOE movie because Hollywood was not getting on it quickly enough. We did not have cameras, or real explosions or anything like that, but we had a backyard, squirt guns, and our imagination. So, of course, they would wait until I was 29 years old to finally release a live action version of one of my favorite cartoons and my favorite action figures. Those toys were crazy durable (especially Shipwreck)and one of my boyhood dreams was finally coming true! Then, it happened; the trailer came out and it was AWFUL! Then a week ago, it was announced they would be showing the movie to critics, which is a kiss of death. So I went into the movie with no expectations. I had wiped away the thoughts of my childhood and prepared for the worst.
After a prologue taking place in France in 1642 (yes, you read that right), we are introduced to McCullen(Christopher Eccleston) who manufactures weapons backed by N.A.T.O. and he has created a weapon using nanobites that eat metal and die with a kill switch, so you only hit your target. A Military unit is tasked with transporting the weapons. The Unit, led by Duke(Channing Tatum) and Ripcord(Marlon Wayans) is attacked by a sexy woman, The Baroness(Sienna Miller), who is trying to get her hands on the weapons. The attack fails because a special unit saves Duke and Ripcord. This unit is G.I. Joe. The are an elite team of soldiers from around the world (no longer Real American Heroes) and they are led by Hawk(A pretty drunk sounding Denis Quaid). The team includes a martial arts expert, Snake Eyes(Ray Park), a tech guy, Breaker(Said Taghmaoui), a hardcore artillery guy, Heavy Duty(Ecko from Lost) and a super sexy, cleavage showing, crossbow ace, Scarlett(Rachel Nichols. Duke and Ripcord want on the team and soon they realize what is going on. They lose the weapons and are on hunt for The Baroness and her martial arts buddy, Storm Shadow(Byung-hun Lee) and their army of super soldiers, who were built by a mysterious deformed doctor.
Focusing heavily on the action scenes and not at all on any sort of dialog, G.I Joe is the the epitome of big dumb fun. The CGI is awfully cartoonish in places and the dialog and performances mirror that. About a quarter in, I just kind of accepted that as the reality and ended up having a pretty good time. The first action sequence, which features two jets and 4 Hummers being destroyed, sets the tone for insane action that is totally implausible, but totally fun. The guns that the bad guys wield emit these blue like photon Lazer bursts that make for some cool effects and funny sounds. Then there is the massive action scene in the middle with Duke and Ripcord in these totally ridiculous accelerator suits running through the streets of Paris chasing the Baroness and her Hummer full of rockets, missiles and bullets. All the while, Snake Eyes is on top of the Hummer getting cars thrown at him. Then in the climatic battle, an all out Star Wars inspired war (UNDER WATER!), there is a kick ass martial arts fight, a chase, a full on attack of good and bad, and Ripcord flying a jet trying to shoot bombs out of the sky! There is barely a chance to breathe between explosions, gun battles and ninja stars being thrown into bodies. The body count is very high for a PG-13 movie.
It does not do much good to talk about performances except to say that Sienna Miller looks like she is totally having fun vamping it up. I mean, Channing Tatum is made to be a soldier, but he lacks the intensity to go with his broad shoulder and mean glare. Marlon Wayans does his usual comic relief, which did not inspire any serious laughs, but it brought levity and made me not take the whole thing so seriously. I mean how serious could a war movie be if it has the dude from White Chicks in it. Denis Quaid is not straining himself at all, but Ray Park's mysterious Snake Eyes and Byung-hun Lee's Storm Shadow are pretty awesome. Both men are perfectly cast, and beyond the amazing martial arts spectacle they show, they give genuinely interesting performances. The young kid(Brandon Soo Hoo) who plays Storm shadow in the various flashbacks is a straight up beast! He is like 12 years old, but he is a brutal little fighter. I expect to be hearing his name a lot to come.
The flashback aspect of the story and connecting some of these characters in different ways, like Baroness and Duke used to be engaged, and Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow grew up fighting each other, can be a bit distracting and help make the movie awfully predictable, especially the whole Destro thing, which I guess is not the twist any way. if you read the cast before going in though, you have the movie spoiled for you any way. Speaking of cast, one name I have not yet mentioned is Arnold Vosloo(The Mummy!) as Zartan. He is such an interesting character and does not do much, but The Mummy is so good as him, that I was hoping for more. If a sequel gets made and the final 15 minutes hinge on the idea of a sequel, maybe he will play a bigger role and maybe, just maybe G.I Joe 2 will be a war movie.
This G.I Joe is not really a war movie. It is a Sci-Fi action movie with futuristic weapons, costumes and scenery. It features technology not in existence and the kind of fatigues worn are not in this moment, Government Issue, although if all female soldiers had Rachel Nichols' body, I wish they were, holy hell! The lairs for both the good guys and the bad guys are under water and the battlefields are never war battlefields except in one key flashback. The battlefields are these high tech bases, or busy streets. This is not the infantry G.I Joe I am used to and it takes a little while to see the characters in name and body to be the ones I grew up with, but not in the way I am used to seeing them.
Stephen Sommers, the director, has created The Mummy, which was a fun CGI movie and Van Helsing, which was an awful CGI movie. G.I Joe falls in between those movies. Sommers has no real vision, as I was not impressed with any of the shots, or tricks or anything, although he had two nice slow motion then sped up motion sequences and his mastery of CGI is dodgy at best, but he knows how to entertain. Something about G.I Joe just worked for me. I was never bored, even if I laughed at how corny it was sometimes. The 16th century prologue turned out to be a total waste of time, except that Sommers is obsessed with older centuries and he is a little too fascinated with the flashbacks, but those flashbacks give us that little storm shadow kid, so all is forgiven.
I was not given the G.I Joe of my childhood, nor was I given the G.I Joe I ever envisioned. I am not sure why this movie was made and called G.I Joe, but it is and that is the G.I Joe movie I got. I was the only one in the entire auditorium who laughed when Hawk said "Knowing is half the battle" and the "Yo Joe" was so perfectly placed and so perfectly cheesy, that I knew the movie wanted to be the G.I Joe of my youth, it just did not know how to be. I waited until the end of the credits in hopes they put on one of those P.S.A's at the end, but no luck, so they missed that opportunity, but perhaps they thought it would be too silly. As far as summer movies go, it is better than Transformers 2 and even more fun than Wolverine. That is not really saying much, but I was anticipating those much more and this is the one I liked the most. I am sure my severely low expectations helped my enjoyment of the movie, but in a big budget movie with bad CGI, I am usually playing with my watch like crazy and in this movie, I only checked my watch one time.
Final Grade: C
P.S. A big shout out to J. Scott for pointing out how to get into movies for cheaper! My mind was blown!
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