Out of all of the delayed films of
2013, 'G.I. Joe Retaliation' has the most unique reason for why it
was pushed back. It was originally set to hit theaters in June 2012,
but was then pushed back just a month before it was set to come out
to March 2013. While official reports say that Paramount did this in
order to convert the film to 3-D, there are other reports stating
that the move was made in order for re-shoots to add more scenes with
Channing Tatum's Duke because apparently in the first cut of the
film, he was killed off early on. While I'm not one for spoilers, I
just want to address if this was true or not. As far as I can tell,
they didn't change anything. Duke still dies at the beginning of the
film and even if they did do re-shoots, it probably would have ended
up the same way. So way to go Paramount, you just wasted 9 months and
messed up both the film and toy industry... just to convert a film to
3-D and let's be honest, has there ever been a good post-converted
3-D film? There are none that I can think of.
But back to the review. This film comes
in the wake of its predecessor, 2009's 'The Rise of Cobra', which did
not receive much of a positive reception from both critics and
audiences. In fact, dare I say it, most people hated the film. As for
me, I thought the movie was okay. If you could get past the multiple
flashbacks and some rather poor CGI, it was a fun little popcorn
flick. So going into this film, I was hoping it would turn out better
than the first film. Does it succeed at that? Well, for the most
part, it does. Sure, at the end of the day, this is really nothing
more than a mindless popcorn flick. But to the film's credit, it
manages to improve on most of the problems of its predecessor even
though it falls victim to some new problems that arise from it.
At the end of 'The Rise of Cobra', the
terrorist organization Cobra had successfully infiltrated the White
House by having their disguise specialist Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) take
the place of the President of the United States (Jonathan Pryce)
through the use of nanomite technology. When in office, the false
President frames Cobra's enemy, the special ops unit G.I. Joe, for
stealing warheads and orders a military strike on them, eliminating
the majority of the team except for Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Lady
Jaye (Adrianne Palicki), and Flint (D.J. Cotrona). As Cobra begins to
take over the country, the three team up with the other remaining
members of G.I. Joe, including Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and his
apprentice Jinx (Elodie Yung), in order to stop Cobra from taking
over the world.
The biggest advantage that this film
has over its predecessor is that it's not as cheesy and over-the-top.
I may have never seen the 'G.I. Joe' cartoon from the 80's, but this
film seems more in line with that show than 'Rise of Cobra' was. Jon
M. Chu also does a better job directing than 'Rise of Cobra's Stephen
Sommers, not cutting to a flashback every five minutes. However, the
plot does get a bit convoluted at times, like with the character arc
for Storm Shadow (Lee Byung-hun), whose return from a supposed death
in the first film is never explained. The way I see it, the only
reason they brought him back was so that Snake Eyes could have
someone to fight with. The fact that Chu's resume mainly consists of
dance movies does seem questionable for the director of an action
movie, but his experience with dance choreography does lead to some
really awesome action sequences, although the hand-to-hand combat
scenes are kind of filmed/edited poorly.
In regards to casting, it's much better
here than it was in the original, led by Dwayne Johnson, who is
excellent here as Roadblock. But in regards to the rest of the
characters, the writing is pretty weak. The character of Flint is so
unmemorable but is apparently so important that he's one of the main
characters. You could have just given that role to Channing Tatum's
Duke. But of course, he's killed off early, which just felt
unnecessary for two reasons. To his credit, Tatum does a better job
here than in the previous film and he does have really good chemistry
with 'The Rock' so when he's killed off, the film just isn't the same
without him there. Cobra Commander (not played by Joseph
Gordon-Levitt) is just there because... he's Cobra Commander.
Seriously, every time he appears, he just walks on screen for a few
minutes and then leaves. But the saddest thing here is that Bruce
Willis is not given anything to do as General Joe Colton, the
original leader of G.I. Joe. They could have cast anybody else in the
role and it would have had the same effect.
So all in all, 'G.I. Joe: Retaliation'
is still no masterpiece. Thankfully, it's not as ridiculously cheesy
as its predecessor, but the film suffers from a convoluted plot when
in reality, the story is fairly simple. It's just G.I. Joe fighting
Cobra... that's all there is. This is compared to the plot of the
first film which, when looking back, wasn't actually that complicated
at all and was pretty easy to follow. While the casting is much
better here than in the last film, most of the characters aren't
given much to do or, in the case of guys like Channing Tatum, killed
off too quickly. In the end, 'Retaliation' is just a slight bit
better than 'The Rise of Cobra' but I don't think it's that bad. It's
an enjoyable popcorn flick... just don't go in expecting too much out
of it.
Rating: 3/5
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