Review: G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, D.J. Cotrona, Channing Tatum
Director: Jon M. Chu
Country: USA
Genre: Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Official Trailer: Here
Production delays are nothing unusual in Hollywood. They’re more the norm than the exception. Studios typically push back the start of production, often delaying a project into irrelevancy (and development hell), but it’s exceedingly rare when a studio pushes back the release date of a major release like Paramount did last year with G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the less-than-anticipated sequel to the 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, the titular characters’ first big-screen appearance. Owned by Hasbro, the company behind the Transformers series, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was meant to duplicate the Transformers’ box-office success, in part relying on the easily exploitable nostalgia of mostly male adults for the toys, the ‘80s animated series, and the Larry Hama-penned comic books.
Set in Washington, D.C., the climactic sequence evinces a lack of creativity or imagination from Chu and his collaborators, quickly devolving into a series of seemingly random explosions, semi-convincing, CG-enhanced mayhem, and poorly edited action scenes.
A bloated budget and underwhelming box-office returns resulted in the departure of director Stephen Sommers (the Mummy series, Van Helsing, Deep Rising). Paramount and Hasbro handed the reins to Jon M. Chu (Step Up 3D, Step Up 2: The Streets) and hired Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Zombieland) to write the script. Rather than retain all or most of the cast, Paramount and Hasbro made the decision to jettison everyone except Channing Tatum’s Duke and Snake Eyes (Ray Park) on the G.I. Joe side and Zartan (Arnold Vosloo), Cobra Commander (voiced by Robert Baker), and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) on the Cobra side. Tatum’s Duke character, however, serves primarily as a bridge character, handing off leadership of the Joes, the world’s most elite fighting force (or so we’re told), to a new character, Roadblock (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson).
But something happened between the time G.I. Joe: Retaliation completed production: Tatum finally became an A-list star and Paramount decided to post-convert G.I. Joe: Retaliation into 3D. From the two narratively unnecessary prologues, it’s likely Tatum returned for reshoots to increase his screen time and develop the brotherly bond with Johnson’s Roadblock character. Between the occasionally humorous banter and their screen time together, it’s a shame, not to mention a major disappointment, that Duke permanently exits G.I. Joe: Retaliation after the 25-minute mark, the victim, along with an entire unit of disposable Joes, of a surprise military attack seemingly ordered by the sitting president of the United States (Jonathan Pryce). Except, of course, it’s really part of a diabolical attack by Cobra, the Joes’ longtime enemies, a super-secret paramilitary organization dedicated, old-school Bond-style, to total and complete world domination (their fans of the board game “Risk” too).
Cobra isn’t controlling the leader of the free world, however. They’ve gone one better, replacing him altogether via nanotech with Zartan. Only two other Joes, Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki) and Flint (D.J. Cotrona), survive the attack. With the president accusing the Joes of betraying the country and killing the Pakistani president, Roadblock and the others are forced to go underground. Along the way, the Joes enlist the original Joe, General Joseph Colton (Bruce Willis), to help them clear their names and stop Cobra’s plan. In a loosely connected, parallel plot, Snake Eyes and another recruit, Jinx (Elodie Yung), track Storm Shadow to a Himalayan monastery where Snake Eyes’ one-time friend has retreated to heal from otherwise life-threatening or, at minimum, back-scarring burns.
G.I. Joe: Retaliation has more significant problems than Tatum’s extended absence or uninventive action scenes.
Storm Shadow’s attempted kidnapping gives Chu the opportunity to put his dance/musical background to better-than-good use. In G.I. Joe: Retaliation’s high point, Snake Eyes and Jinx battle red-clad ninjas (Cobra favors red over black, except for their commander, who prefers traditional black) in and out of the monastery, eventually spilling out to the side of the mountain. The ensuing fight sequence makes full, vertiginous use of the 3D post-conversion. It’s unfortunate, however, that Chu saved the best for the penultimate action sequence rather than the last. Set in Washington, D.C., the climactic sequence evinces a lack of creativity or imagination from Chu and his collaborators, quickly devolving into a series of seemingly random explosions, semi-convincing, CG-enhanced mayhem, and poorly edited action scenes. Putting Johnson in a modified assault vehicle for most of the sequence doesn’t help either. Chu even uses the same reaction shots of Johnson to pad out his time inside the modified vehicle. When Roadblock finally emerges from the tank to take on a secondary villain, Firefly (Ray Stevenson), their fight scene is just as underwhelming as their initial encounter an hour earlier in the film.
G.I. Joe: Retaliation has more significant problems than Tatum’s extended absence or uninventive action scenes. The two, water-treading prologues don’t help, of course, but neither does an uninventive, stale plot that reeks of studio and toy company interference, dull, disengaged performances from everyone not named Tatum and Johnson, an ill-conceived effort to mix “grim and gritty” plot points with light humor and adolescent fantasy, over-the-top gun and/or military fetishism, citywide destruction as superfluous spectacle, clumsy, cringe-worthy exposition scenes courtesy of hip-hop-impresario-turned-occasional-actor RZA as a blind martial arts master, an unnecessarily retconned backstory for a major character, and a feeble attempt at political commentary found in Cobra’s ultimate plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons via the threat of global annihilation, not, it should be added, due to any benevolence by Cobra’s leaders, but the better to rule the world. To quote Tears for Fears, Cobra command’s (likely) favorite band, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” That, of course, doesn’t mean moviegoers should have to watch them try.
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Review: G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
