Except for a few funny (when the movie acknowledges its campy roots) moments, John M Chu’s “GI Joe: Retaliation” is a relatively underwhelming CGI-action ordeal.
After completing a mission in Pakistan, the Special Forces group known as the GI Joe’s are suddenly ambushed, and all but three are wiped out in an attack ordered by the president of the United States.
However, the president is actually Zartan — a super-evil guy who’s part of the evil, Cobra organization — in disguise, and he wants to get the Joes out of the way so he and his Cobra pals can use nuclear weapons to take over the world. But before doing that, they need to break their leader, Cobra Commander, out of prison).
And, it’s up to the remaining Joes to stop Cobra and…you know, whatever.
For how much CGI action and explosions there are, the movie, on a whole, feels rather slight, like it was only made to set up the next movie (which, based on how this one ends, there will be one).
There’s not a lot of excitement and surprise. “GI Joe: Retaliation” is, itself, a sequel to 2009’s “GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.” I haven’t seen that film, but luckily, at the beginning of “Retaliation,” it tells me what I’ve missed: who the good guys are, who the baddies are, where they are at what time and so forth.
The only real surprise in the movie comes when a character is killed off early on. Chu also gets rid of the movie’s only real, interesting, good guy, and we’re left with a dull group of heroes.
Liking the bad guys
Dwayne Johnson plays Roadblock, and while he can do the action scenes effortlessly, he’s not really an “actor” and has never given much of a performance in any of his movies. He’s also the only person in the movie who takes the material seriously, which is the wrong approach to a modern “GI Joe” movie.
The other good guys aren’t any better. There’s the sexy Jaye (Adrianne Paliki) and Flint (D.J Cotrona), who are both so bland and add absolutely nothing to the movie.
Then you’ve got the two ninjas: Snake Eyes (Ray Park), who wears a full suit of armor and a mask concealing his face, but doesn’t talk. And there’s sexy female warrior No. 2, Jinx (Elodie Yung), who may as well be masked and in a full suit of armor.
And, finally, Bruce Willis shows up as a veteran Joe, who just happens to have a massive arsenal of guns for the group to use. Willis seems to be here for two reasons: the paycheck and just the fact that he’s “Bruce Willis,” the aging action star.
The Cobras are more fun to watch, but that’s because they’re cartoon villains. Jonathan Pryce, the Zartan in presidential disguise, appears to be having fun, cracking jokes and being all-evil. He can be extremely hammy at times, but at least he’s embracing the silliness of the material, something that the Joes don’t do enough of.
That’s the only way a movie like this can work. Considering that the main bad guy is named Cobra Commander (yep, that’s it, no real name), the characters need to be silly and self-aware.
Relying on clichés
The climax — which involves a nuclear-arms meeting at Fort Sumter, of all places, between the world leaders and the “president” — is like the rest of the movie: underwhelming and relies on the overdone ticking-time-bomb-in-a-briefcase cliché.
The city of London is also completely annihilated, but the movie quickly moves on without addressing it again, even at the end, during the medal-giving ceremony.
“GI Joe: Retaliation” isn’t terrible, only because it sometimes acknowledges its campiness, but it’s also not all that good. It’s simply underwhelming.
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