GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Whatever happened to the Real American Hero?

Like most red-blooded American males, I grew up playing with GI Joes, so when this one was first mentioned I thought – waaaay cool, then I saw the preview and I thought, oh no!  For some odd reason, the studio didn’t allow early screenings or any press to see this film.  Maybe they wanted our ten bucks to help dilute the close to 170 million dollar budget; they need every red cent – trust me.  Merchandising is going to make up the majority of profit methinks.  This was an amazing year for film, and some really great movies were out this year, but GI Joe stands alone in the comic/action genre this month – so, it should do pretty well.

GI Joe is an elite squad of classified soldiers from several nations, completely secret and extremely well trained.  They are on a mission to ensure the safe delivery of four nanotech warheads, which in a nutshell, nanotechnology is like a million little bugs that can reproduce and perform single tasks.  Writ large, millions of little bugs eating you would turn you into powder in seconds.  So, GI Joe is there to make sure the bad guys don’t get these warheads.  The whole film centers around the warheads, which looked like RPGs with the bio-agents from The Rock, in fact they looked exactly like that!

At any rate, it was an enjoyable action movie, tons and tons of action with limited dialog and mediocre acting all around.  I would have liked to say Sienna Miller did a great job as the Baroness, but she didn’t even attempt the accent – what a let down.   What is the point of getting all gussied up in leather with a one-shot, twenty kill, weapon if you aren’t going to wield a sultry European accent, German, French, Italian (SOMETHING) to sexy it up for the drooling masses?

Many of the well known figures were displayed in the film, with some origins revealed as well.  Destro, The Baroness, Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, Rip Cord, Breaker, Duke, Hawk, Scarlet, am I missing anyone?  Oh yea, Brendan Fraser was supposedly Gung Ho, but I challenge anyone to recognize him as such, he looked like a weenie.  No doubt he was thrown in there because director Stephen Sommers liked working with him in the Mummy films.  I’m not going to inundate you with who played who – you can check out several other sources for that intel.

Channing Tatum, as Duke is such a terrible actor, I know the ladies love him for his chiseled (action-figure like) presence – but the guy can kill a lot of scenes.  I did notice he did far better in the out and out action sequences, and maybe he detracted from the acting of Marlon Wayans as Ripcord – or maybe Wayans sucks too.  His delivery was stilted and forced in most shots.  Scarlett (Rachel Nichols) keeps turning down his advances and there makes for some coy comedy – thankfully, very little comedy is forced into the script.  And overall, the story wasn’t terrible – but it wasn’t terrific either.  One plot loophole centered around the Baroness, but almost immediately it gets filled, so I liked that . . . plot holes irk me to no end.

This story tells how Cobra begins, thus the title, the Rise of Cobra – and while it might not have been a critically impressive film – it did make me jump in my jet-black Tiburon and speed away the whole time thinking, “man wouldn’t my hood look bad ass with a Cobra decal”.  There are some scenes that teenagers and true action lovers will enjoy with excellent, seamless special effects in most places.  The cheese factor is heavy though, which I expected after seeing the previews – but if you enjoy your action movies to really just get to the good shit and trim the fat of reality and thoughtful prose – this is your film.  Now, I have to go, I am gonna check out ebay for a Cobra decal.