

Review: GI Joe: Retaliation



Four years and one 11th month hiatus later, GI Joe was back on the big screen with GI Joe: Retaliation. Retaliation was determined to be different from The Rise of Cobra starting with its cast. Out:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sienna Miller, Dennis Quaid, and Marlon Wayans. In: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Adrianne Palicki, Bruce Willis, and Walton Coogins. The only holdovers were Channing Tatum (not for too long), Ray Park (Snake Eyes), and Byung-hun Lee. It’s obvious someone got the memo about how ludicrous Rise Cobra looked because there wasn’t just a cast overhaul, Retaliation hammers out a few necessary details. The gasmask look Cobra Commander donned in Rise is replaced by the iconic helmet and ceremonial uniform.  Roadblock carries big guns, Flint and Lady Jaye play flirtsies, the hovercrafts and tanks look like toys from 25 years ago, and Storm Shadow continues to not speak.

Retaliation takes places shortly after the events from Rise of Cobra. The Joes are traveling the globe, saving the world one small crisis at a time, while Cobra Commander and Destro are being held in a secret maximum security prison ,ran by a Warden James (played hilariously by Walton Coogins), meanwhile Storm Shadow and Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) are still at large.

Cobra’s team devises a plan to impersonate the President, using Zartan and nano technology as a disguise, and use the Presidents absolute power to eliminate the Joes. After the Joe’s base is attacked, the only remaining Joes are Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Lady Jaye (Adrienne Palicki), Flint (D. J Cotrona), and Snake Eyes (Ray Park). Framed for crimes against the country, the Joe’s search to find out who tried to have them eliminated and get revenge on whoever killed their comrades.

After Cobra Commander is broken out of the maximum security prison, we learn Cobra’s real reason for eliminating the Joes. Surprise, Cobra wants to dominate the world of by creating a massive weapon that can wipe out millions.

Sound good so far? It should! The first 1/3 of the movie isn’t that bad. Surprisingly Dwayne Johnson and Channing Tatum have Dwayne Wade and Lebron James fast break type of chemistry in the film’s opening moments. For the short time Tatum is on screen, he and Johnson are fantastic together. They’re good enough to make someone sign off on any buddy cop film they want to make.

At this point, Retaliation is an average to above average action movie by most standards.

For some reason, after the first 1/3 of the film, it starts falling to pieces. Quickly. I don’t want to blame The RZA, but after his MTV Movie Awards parody style performance as the Blind Master, the movie starts its nose dive decent to Sucksville.

The film’s problems don’t all rest on Bobby Digital’s shoulders – Adrienne Palicki and F.J. Cotrona lack any real chemistry together, the plot gets insanely bad, and Bruce Willis is given nothing to do.

Retaliation’s biggest failure is to not feeling like a GI Joe movie. Much like Rise of Cobra, Retaliation feels like an action movie with a few characters you recognize from your childhood. The movie isn’t rooted in a world that immerses moviegoers in all things GI Joe.

The biggest elephant in the room is audiences have seen this footage for almost a year. Snake Eyes and Jinx mountainside escape would’ve been much cooler if I hadn’t see the footage 100 times in the past 12 months.  I thought the 11-month delay would provide much tighter, crisper action scenes. Nope. They really just added some crappy 3D and called it good.

The one bright side during the film’s downward spiral is Jonathan Pryce as the fake President. Pryce literally steals the show with witty one-liners and facial expressions. During one of the film’s climatic scenes, Pryce even makes quietly playing Angry Birds hilarious.

GI Joe: Retaliation is a much better film than its predecessor but it’s incredible how fast it fell apart. Sadly, Pryce, Coogins, and Tatum’s good performances are going to be lost in a bad action film masquerading as a GI Joe movie.

Grade: C

Tim Hall

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