G. I. Joe Retaliation

G.I. Joe was not a great success in terms of entertaining someone who was a giant fan of the cartoon and action figures. Dennis Quaid was awesome because it was clear he was drunk in every scene, but the film was kind of boring. I was pretty damn surprised when I heard they were going ahead with a sequel, and when it came out that most of the cast in the original would not be used in this one, I was even more confused. Enter The Rock. The Rock, who can basically do no wrong in PG-13 or R rated films, seemed like the perfect guy to energize the franchise. Hell, it worked with The Fast and Furious series. Fast 4 was okay, but Fast 5 was spectacular. This sequel to G.I. Joe was to have a new director and a whole new direction, but it got delayed for nearly a year because they wanted to convert the film to 3D. Instead of cashing in on Channing Tatum's monster 2012, they waited. Maybe it was because the movie was not good enough to stand up to the big summer movies, maybe it really was for the 3D conversion, but whatever the reason, it meant we would have to deal with seeing trailers for this film for roughly an entire year. That sort of overkill really sucks out any true desire to see the movie and when it was finally released, I was not nearly as excited as I should have been for a movie starring The Rock and also ninjas.

The G.I.Joes are a secret Government military project. They do the dirty work and their next task is to go into Pakistan to grab their nuclear weapons as that country is in turmoil because their Prime Minister is killed. the President orders the strike, but the President is not who he seems. He is really Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) in disguise, and he has world domination on the brain, but first he needs to find where Cobra Commander is being held captive. The Joes easily get the nukes, and are just awaiting morning to transport them, but before they can leave, they are attacked and completely obliterated. Only 3 Joes survive: Roadblock (The Rock), Lady Jay (Adrianne Palicki)and Flint (D. J. Cotrona). Roadblock gets only a moment to honor his fallen best friend before they must get moving, and try to save the world. Cobra Commander is located, freed and quickly takes his place as the leader of COBRA. Zartan, as the President, tells the world that he wants to meet with all of the leaders of Nuclear countries for a Nuclear summit, but he has nefarious plans in store. The Joes, meanwhile, realize that the President is not the President and try to figure out what they are going to do when they are only 3 people. Enter the return of Snake Eyes Ray Park). Snake Eyes is a bad ass ninja who does not talk. He is rivals with COBRA's Storm Shadow, as they grew up together and Storm Shadow killed their ninja master, or did he? Roadblock also knows a retired Joe, for whom they are named, and they find him (Bruce Willis) and recruit him, who recruits a bunch of retired Joes for the fight.

G.I. Joe Retaliation is definitely not as silly as the first entry into the series, but that does not mean that it is not silly, because it is. There are very cool moments, like the ninja mountain fight, and there are overly stupid moments, like the whole story. John M. Chu, best known for directing such cinematic gems as Step Up 2, Step up 3 and Justin Beiber's Never Say Never, manages to stage action sequences pretty well, but he cannot handle anything else, but he was given a weak story, so it cannot all be his fault. There is an action sequence early on, when the Joes are recovering the nuclear weapon from Pakistan, that is slick, well choreographed and very well executed. The action moves fluidly from character to character, never losing a moment of intensity, and it actually made me think that maybe this would be a better movie than I thought. That all changed during the slower story driven moments. There are lengthy stretches where nothing at all happens and I found myself just waiting for The Rock to punch someone, anyone! I also loved Cobra Commander's jailbreak scene, but mostly because of Walton Goggins awesome performance as the prison warden. That dude has always been a solid actor, and here he pretty much lights up the screen with his fast talking character. if I am being completely honest, he might be the only character I actually cared about in the entire film.

The Rock does a fine job taking over the franchise. As I have mentioned before, I love the Rock because he looks like a live action cartoon character. It is laughable how he towers over everyone. In order to combat the Rock, the film enlists Ray Stevenson (ROME, Punisher 2, Dexter) to play Firefly, the COBRA counterpart to Roadblock. The Rock and Stevenson have one decent hand to hand combat scene and they have a good chase during the climatic action scene. I like how they play off each other and I think it would be fun to see them go against each other in a better film. The Rock is funny enough to provide a nice levity from the death and destruction and the guy oozes charisma from his years performing in the WWE and of course, he is completely kick ass. Roadblock has to be played by someone kick ass because he gets the biggest gun and he gets to blow up tank after tank. If it was someone other than The Rock, it probably would not work. So kudos to the casting department. Adrianne Palicki, who I have loved since Friday Night Lights, does no get nearly enough to do here. She is an actress capable of depth, vulnerability and toughness, and here she is basically just sex appeal. When the Joes get stuck, they put her in revealing clothing and she gets the information she needs. Do not get me wrong, she is gorgeous and her body is stupid sexy, but she can do so much more and I was disappointed to see her reduced to just using sex. I guess I should have expected it in this type of film. Bruce Willis does not really offer anything to his role except a few decent one-liners, but one has to wonder why he agreed to do this film and after seeing him in Looper last year, I have decided that he just chooses not to try in most movies. He sleep walks through his glorified cameo.

The ninja mountain action sequence is definitely the best part of the whole movie and it makes me wish they had not spoiled any of it in the year's worth of trailers we got for it. I am typically over the whole sped-up-then-slowed-down action scenes, but they are effective on the side of a mountain with ninjas leaping to and from mountains to attack each other. My biggest complaint with the ninja sequence and the ninja experience overall in this movie was the lack of sword fights. I was underwhelmed by the hand to hand fighting here. The climatic action sequence starts with the silliest plot point I have seen in a while. Once Zartan has all of the world leaders in a room together, he asks them to deactivate their nuclear weapons and when they refuse, he launches America's Nuclear weapons and then all of the world leaders pull out their nuclear suitcases and launch their weapons! Why would all of the leaders just be carrying around their nuclear weapon suitcases? There had to have been a more logical way for that whole thing to play out. It is ridiculous and pretty much pulled me out of the final 20 minutes of the film.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation has its moments, but I was hoping for so much more. I was expecting worse than I got, so in that aspect, the film succeeds. I still feel there is a way to do a really great live action G.I. Joe movie, but with the studio being 0-2, I doubt we will get a chance to see a third one. The 3D did not do anything to enhance the film, but did not take away from it either. The chemistry between The Rock and Channing Tatum certainly made the first 20 minutes better than the rest of the movie and I just felt there was too much wasted potential with the movie.

Final Grade: C-