Movie Review - G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Movie Review - G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Starring Dennis Quaid, Channing Tatum, and Sienna Miller.
Rated PG-13 for strong sequences of action violence and mayhem throughout.
GI Joe is remarkably okay. I usually head to new flicks as soon as possible, but with this one, I wasn't exactly beating down the doors to watch it. So, it took me a few days to actually find a time to go watch it. I went into it thinking I would hate it, but ended up enjoying myself. Which surprised the crap out of me after such terrible press and a trailer that made me not want to see it.
GI Joe is a movie based off the toy line at Hasbro. This idea was only possible after Transformers hit it big and I secretly hope Hasbro continues to push their toy lines into big budget movies as they are turning out to be pretty decent action flicks. Since GI Joe is based on a toy line that had a Saturday Morning Cartoon, you can't expect too much out of a live action adaptation - I went in expecting crap and came out satisfied with the action.
GI Joe centers around the idea that there is a super-secret awesome group of alpha soldiers that get sent in to take care of business when all the other wings of the military manage to fail, which really begs the question - why don't they just send out the Joe's to begin with? Anyway, it wouldn't make a good movie if they weren't the best of the best, so I'll accept it. The entire movie revolves around a group of Joe's fighting to save the world from a group that wants to rule the world.
The plot is really not that important as the movie is more about the visual spectacle and the action. The action is good with just enough fancy effects to keep it fresh. The problem comes when the movie tries to do too much special effects which ends up hurting the flick as the effects seem rushed and not quite finished. You can tell when the airplanes, people, and vehicles turn into digitally created machines rather than the real thing and that's a bad thing especially in such a high budget (175 million) flick as this.
As mentioned before, the plot isn't really that big of a thing, but the movie tries to use flashbacks as a 'innovative' device in telling the story and ends up annoying everyone. The flashbacks are far too frequent and some are a bit unnecessary. I would have liked to seen a more straightforward experience watching this flick or at least had all the flashbacks happen at about the same time so the story wasn't broken up so much. Overall, it wasn't bad, just not good.
GI Joe is a decent flick - its got some great action, good special effects, and a few decent actors/actresses that at least look good while running around. One week ago, I would have recommended not watching this film, however I changed my mind - I'll recommend it to anyone that happens to have a few hours to waste on watching some people run around, blow stuff up, and look cool doing it OR happen to have a huge crush on GI Joe merchandise.
GI Joe is playing at Cinema 3 in McCook - check www.fridleytheatres.com for showtimes and coming soon, you can buy your tickets online! Next week, hopefully we will get District 9. I'm crossing my fingers. You should too.