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Saturday 29th August 2009, 01:04
G.I. Joe: A listener's review
Us Movie Banter podcasters do our best to give fair and balanced reviews, but sometimes it needs you, the podcastee to give your tuppenceworth too. So here's an email sent in by Jedd, of G.I. Joe...
G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra is first and foremost a comic book or cartoon come to vivid life, and its strongest point is that it accepts the fact and does not take itself too seriously at all, reveling in its relative silliness. The film’s over-the-top nature is best exemplified by the sprawling hidden bases in locations as preposterous as under the Sahara Desert and at the North Pole, and the good old-fashioned “evil megalomaniac takes over the world” storyline. All this brings to mind the Bond films of yore, which over the last few years have lost much of their glamour and ridiculous spectacle.
However, it is painfully obvious at times that the movie tries to pack far too much into its 118 minutes, turning it into a partial cinematic equivalent of an elephant standing on thin ice. One action sequence begins barely before the last ends and as such it’s difficult not to feel overwhelmed by the proceedings-even when they are balanced with a nice assortment of character moments.
Characterization is not paper-thin per se, as one would expect with this sort of motion picture, but rather around as thick as a weekly magazine. To a limited degree of success, the film balances the wham-bam action sequences with the romantic subplot between Duke and the Baroness and also the rivalry between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, which stretches back to their childhoods.
Surprisingly, the performances are pretty much up to par, even though it is a given all eyes will be on the action and visual spectacle rather than the actors. This is the one genre of movie where over-the-top is welcome; everybody gets a chance to play the stereotype, and each of the actors seems to enjoy that very much.
Ultimately, the movie comes off as Wanted-lite, complete with entirely unbelievable action set-pieces, which include Duke and Ripcord wearing “accelerator suits” chasing the Baroness and Storm Shadow-with Snake Eyes hanging off the side of their Hummer-through the streets of Paris (leaving innumerable cars destroyed in their wake) and the ensuing destruction of the Eiffel Tower by way of nano-mites.
However, for a movie aimed in most part at youngsters and created mainly for the purpose of selling toys, it packs in an overwhelming amount of unrelenting violence. There are a smorgasbord of explosions, fisticuffs, flying bullets and impalements, and even a particularly brutal fight between two ten-year-olds. The Cobra henchmen get the worst of it: they are thrown into electrical arcs, set on fire, have grenades shoved into their helmets, fall into bottomless pits and get disintegrated from the inside-out.
In the end, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is a fairly entertaining trifle perfect for the attention-impaired and those who like their action flicks served with lots of (less-than convincing) CGI sauce. It’s a delightfully B-grade, feather-weight fantasy fuel for your inner ten-year-old boy that stays on the right side of average (Joe).
RATING: 3/5 STARS
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