G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)

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nTitle: G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)

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nDirector: Jon M. Chu

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nCast: Jonathan Pryce, Dwayne Johnson, Bruce Willis, ChanningnTatum, Ray Park, Byung Hung Lee, RZA

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nReview: 

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nG.I. Joe Retaliation is a film I watched with somentrepidation because of how the studio got cold feet last summer and took thenfilm off their summer roster. That’s right, Paramount Pictures and MGM spent ancouple of millions promoting this sequel as a summer 2012 release then feltnunsure about the film, yanked it out of its release date and shifted it to Mayn2013, almost a whole year after it was made; their reasons? Supposedly theynwanted to amp up the effects and convert the thing to 3D. Me? I think they werenfixing a couple of things here and there that they didn’t like about the film. Maybe they felt they had a lackluster film andndecided to add a scene or two, just to make things flow a little better? Studios do these re-shoots all the time; they are fine by me as long as the endnresult is worth it. So, was the whole damn thing worth it? Did the studiosncourse of action with this film work?

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nG.I. Joe Retaliation is about Cobra Commander breaking outnof a super high tech underground prison and attempting, yet again, to “rule thenworld”. How does he plan to achieve this? By kidnapping the president andnplacing one of his loyal servants known as ‘Zartan’ (master of disguise) in hisnplace. You see, Zartan can morph and look exactly like the president, sonwithout America knowing it, they have a member of Cobra ruling the nation. Andnsoon, at the right time, Cobra will take over! But how will he hold the worldnat ransom? And how can a disbanded G.I. Joe team stop him from achieving hisnworld dominating goals?
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nSo yeah, I wasn’t all that excited for this movie, in fact,nI wasn’t planning on seeing it in theaters, because in my book, when a studiongets cold feet with a movie the way they did with this one, it raises a rednflag for me immediately. It means the studio didn’t have faith in their productnand thought it would fail if released. But then something happened. The filmnwas released and it shot straight to the first spot at the box office! Reviewsnwere saying “it wasn’t all that bad” and that it surpassed the first one, which wasn’t all that difficult considering how lackluster the first one was; making a better film wasn’t a tough task. The real task was giving this one that G.I. Joe feel, something that I felt the original lacked, yet this one has in spades. The term used to describe a film like this one amongst film reviewers is “fluff”,nwhich basically means it’s not an important film, it’s the kind of film younwatch, are entertained by and then quickly forget because it doesn’t make anlasting impression on you. I personally think this is exactly the kind of filmnRetaliation is; pure and simple fluff, but that isn’t a bad thing if that’snwhat you know you’re going to see.  Inknew this was what I was in for, so I just went with the flow. Did I end upnhaving a good time?  Hells yeah.nI mean, as everyone is saying, it is way better then the first. It isn’t asnjokey, it’s tone is slightly more realistic, but I stress the “slightly”; the film is still very much a comic book film.

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nFirst the good points: this film feels like G.I. Joe movie,nthe vehicles they use in the film were apparently really based on the toysnbecause I recognized a lot of them from my pre-teen years, back when Incollected G.I. Joe toys with a vengeance. I was one of these kids who had anbunch of jets and tanks and Joes, and placed them in a bunch of positions, bynthe end of the day I’d have this big ass war going on, ha, the memories. Butnyeah, this movie will have you getting a couple of flashbacks if you were a hardcorenJoe fan. Coolest part about the whole movie is that Cobra finally looks likenfreaking Cobra! I loved that about it. Cobra Commander looked so freaking coolnwith his mirror surface helmet. The voice, the wardrobe all screamed classicnCobra Commander. There are moments where Cobra is looking over his empire  that are too cool for school. On the downside,nwe didn’t get enough of Cobra; I wanted more of the guy! Instead we get JonathannPryce playing Zartan; he’s the villain for most of the picture, I wanted more Cobra!n 

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nAlso on the downside of things, they treated so many characters like crap.nI mean, all the Joes from the first film simply disappear or die, and we’renleft with a rag tag bunch of Joes. I loved thenaddition of Dwayne Johnson into the whole G.I. Joe universe, but I hated thenfact that for example they disposed so easily of ‘Destro’ one of the coolest villainsnthat the Cobra’s count with. And where the hell was The Baroness? She was neverneven spoken of! But whatever, this is a comic book movie and things like thisnare bound to happen. I’m sure what happened was that the actors simply didn’tnwant to return to a movie they thought would end up being crap, I bet they allnwish they had returned now! I’m sure they will return for a third entry,nespecially when we take in consideration how successful this film has turnednout to be; nobody likes to say no to a blockbuster. Dwayne Johnson fitsnperfectly in this film, but they also decided to add Bruce Willis as ‘the originalnJoe’ but he ends up doing the same thing he’s being doing in most movies he isnin now, smirking, shooting machine guns and saying one liners.

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nI enjoyed the factnthat thematically speaking the film isn’t entirely hollow, actually, the storyntouches upon old fears that have, in an interesting turn of events, suddenlynre-emerged in the world. I’m talking about nuclear paranoia; memories of the Cold War flashing on everbodies minds, countries threatening to blow each other away. Suddenly we gotnNorth Korea threatening to blow the world to smithereens with its nuclearnweapons, and the whole world seems to be entering into some sort of cold warnyet again. I guess governments want to amp up that all important fear factor innthe world, some world leaders like to get cocky and show they are the biggest and baddest. So anyhow, there’s a cool moment in the film where many of the world’snrulers meet in one room to discuss the fate of the world and for a moment itnseems like the world will be blown to shreds. I liked that contemporary theme,nit rang true. Actually, those scenes had some people giggling in the theater,nmyself included, the whole idea of these crazy dudes shooting nuclear weapons at each other is so contemporary, so right of the moment. It brought to mind Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or How I learnednto stop worrying and love the bomb (1964). The film points out, in the midst ofnall its comic book hijinks that the fate of the world lies in the hands of ancouple of power hungry nutcases, it’s kind of scary when you think about it.

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nThis new film is stylish, and has a couple of really coolnaction moments, like for example there’s this whole sequence where Snake Eyesnhas to escape a temple that’s up in some icy mountains, and he has to rappelnthe hell out of there, and so suddenly we get this really cool sequence withnNinjas fighting while rappelling down a mountain, which was too cool fornschool. I mean, the filmmakers themselves even ended the scene by cutting tonanother scene with people clapping as if giving themselves a pat on the backnfor the whole thing. Retaliation switches from huge action sequences to political intrigue scenes and it’s all very entertaining in my book, it worked. Seeing power hungry politicians pressing red buttons is always entertaining! Even the idea gets me on the edge of my seat, G.I. Joe: Retaliation plays with all these fears that humanity must be feeling as I type this.  Retaliation was directed by a guy called Jon M. Chu, the guynresponsible for bringing us such masterpieces as Step Up 2: The Streets (2008) andnStep Up 3D (2010); I guess those films made enough money at the box office thatnhe was given the chance to make this one, and that’s cool by me, he showed hencould pull off an effects heavy film. Lucky for him that Retaliation has madenso much money because a third film in the franchise has been greenlit,nsomething tells me it will be bigger and better. Hopefully the series willncontinue its steady rise in quality. It might be fluff, but it’s fun fluff.

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nRating: 4 out of 5  

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