Growing up in the mid eighties there were not many more things I looked forward to than Saturday morning cartoons. Two of my favorites were “The Transformers” and “G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero”. Who could forget those immortal words as the Joe’s attacked Cobra “Yo Joe!” So needless to say I was pretty excited when the first G.I. Joe movie was released, and after seeing it, like many others I was extremely disappointed. The movie was not the G.I. Joe I grew up on and was just not a good movie in general. With that said and after seeing the trailer, I was ready to give “G.I. Joe Retaliation” a chance to bring something to the screen worth watching.
The first
good sign is that they pretty much came with a new cast and got rid of the few
leftovers pretty early in the film. The Joes are America’s elite fighting
force. Lead by Duke (Channing Tatum) and Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) they are
sent on a mission to stop something from falling in the bad guy’s hands. After
beating the bad guys, they are ambushed with pretty much everyone being killed
except Roadblock, Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki) and Flint (D.J. Cotrona).
Together the three remaining Joes travel back to America to find out who is
behind the ambush. It seems the President (Jonathan Pryce) is not the real
president but the wicked Zartan and is setting up for a takeover by Cobra. The only
thing that can stop them is G.I. Joe, but will they be able to foil Cobra’s
evil plans?
Well the
good news is that this movie is not even close to being as bad as the first
one. In fact it is kind of entertaining and reminds me of those Saturday
morning cartoons I use to watch. What is kind of cool is how they made a movie
with a lot of shooting, but you never see any blood. I thought that was a good
plan and brought back memories of the cartoon, where planes would get shot out
of the sky, but then you’d see the parachute coming down. The characters they
use are good enough and help you forget the mess that was the first movie. It is written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick,
who brought us the much loved “Zombieland” and directed by Jon M. Chu, who does
well for directing his first action movie.
I will say that this is still not the movie I
would love to see, but they are a lot closer this time around. This film is
actually entertaining and that is really all you can ask for in a movie like
this, and while I think most people will really enjoy this movie, you won’t
hear anyone screaming out “Yo Joe!” after this one is over, but maybe they’ll
make enough money for another one.
Here’s hoping third-times the charm?
Brian Taylor
No comments:
Post a Comment