G.I. Joe: Retaliation

TAKE 1: One Man’s Opinion

…because film is largely subjective

by Frederick William Springer III

G.I. Joe: Retaliation 3D

Release Date:   28 March 2013                                                            Runtime:  110 Minutes              

Review Date:  9 June 2013                                                                    Rating:  3 (of 6)

     For an action flick, G.I. Joe: Retaliation is pretty boring, even during the action sequences.  I will say that 3D technology has seemingly improved over the past year, the action sequences in The Avengers (which were a large part of that movie) blurry and hard to follow, whereas here they are more crisp and clean (but not quite perfected yet).

     Not having seen the first film and neither the toys, cartoon nor comics being part of my childhood, the draw here was seeing Bruce Willis in the trailer while being credited as the original Joe.  That, to me, sounded bad ass.  However, Willis doesn't even make an appearance till 50 minutes in (and a short scene at that) and then we don't see him again for another 30 minutes (again, quick, brief appearances).  I'd venture to guess all of Willis's work was shot in less than 5 days and his sole purpose was to cameo so the marketing department could put him on the poster (front and center) and tap into his fan base, much like in The Expendables franchise.  If you're longing for a Willis film, this isn't it.

     Not seeing the first movie, I got the feeling that maybe you should watch it prior to get a better feel for these characters.  However, as I'm typing this, I checked out the original cast and our 3 main characters this time around, Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Flint (D.J. Cotrona) and Lady Jay (Adrianne Palicki), weren't involved.  This is pretty much a clean state so this film pretty much fails in character development.

     Story wise, I will give kudos for the clever, creative way the world's nuclear arsenal problem was solved, albeit it's one that will likely never transpire.  I'm usually pretty sharp, but the opening sequence left me very confused.  It seemed as though there was one flag flying at the installation that was attacked but then the flags were swapped and the G.I. Joes learn they had attacked the wrong place.  This was never explained afterwards, making me at first think that the lack of addressing the issue meant that the rest of the movie was going to show what happened preceding that scene and how they got there but things soon transpire that makes it apparent that that is not the case.  So the opening is just left very misplaced and irrelevant, other than showcasing teamwork.

     I found the performance delivered by RZA as the character of Blind Master horrendous.  I personally think I'm a lousy actor but believe I could have done better and been more believable.  While some singers do have the talent to crossover into acting (Mos Def for example), others clearly do not.

     So with action and story both lacking, there really isn't much reason to go see G.I. Joe: Retaliation at all.