Movie review: GI Joe film isn’t fully articulated
Director Stephen Sommers (“Van Helsing”) brings the military action heroes GI Joe to film with “GI Joe: Rise of Cobra.”
The movie is loosely based on the Real American Hero action figure line, introduced in 1983. Perhaps with worldwide box office in mind, the Joes no longer represent just the American military, but are a secret NATO organization headquartered in Egypt.
As the film begins, Army buddies Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) are part of a team tasked to transport a new type of weapon created by the company Mars. Mars is run by James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), a Scottish weaponsmaker. But the convoy is attacked by high-tech forces led by The Baroness (Sienna Miller), who also happens to be Duke’s ex-girlfriend.
Things look bad for the good guys, until they are bailed out by the Alpha team of the elite military unit GI Joe. This group includes ninja Snake Eyes (Ray Park), science genius Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), heavily armed Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and tech expert Breaker (Said Taghmaoui). The Joes are led by General Hawk (Dennis Quaid), who OKs the addition of Duke and Ripcord to the team. But first they have to undergo training — which of course means a montage.
Then the Joes are off to recover the weapons, which feature nanomites, tiny metal-eating robots. Along the way, flashbacks attempt to explain the connections between the characters, including Snake Eyes and McCullen crony Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee). But unfortunately, the characters never gain much depth. Essentially, they appear to be action figures moving through the plot as more and more things explode.
The toy line GI Joe: A Real American Hero spawned an animated program and comic-book series in the 1980s. Both made more sense than “Rise of Cobra.”
But for the first half, the pace moves quickly and the action is pretty good. By the last hour, though, it’s started to wear thin, and the film’s undersea sequence goes on far too long.
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