Mr. Jon Zagel, lifetime friend of the website and podcast is a damn good critic of movies. Now he puts those opinions on the Internets for everyone to enjoy. We are privileged to start having his reviews on our site. To view more of his reviews and to read a spoiler review of G.I. Joe, hit the links after his review.
This review is for G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the sequel to the 2009 G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra movie.
Sequels are a funny thing. Putting aside the idea of a remake, a sequel can be the taking up of a story as it was left off in the previous movie, it can be a continuing “years later” type look at the characters, or it can be like this movie, a, more or less, complete abandonment of the previous plot to focus on some new, unrelated story that doesn’t answer any of the major plot pieces, or follow any of the same themes as the original.
Don’t get me wrong. This is still a huge action film with pretty decent CG effects. There’s more action, more fighting, more star power, and, of course, more hot ninja on ninja action than in the first. There is, as a large budget action blockbuster, a striking amount of shaky cam, which, in case you haven’t figured out yet, I hate. In this case, however, it’s the sheer amount of shaky cam rather than the magnitude of it’s use. I can’t recall any scenes in which I couldn’t tell what was going on due to it, and I always appreciate that. However, since this movie is almost completely action, there’s just so much shaky cam that I still managed to get tired of it rather quickly. The whole film is pretty much like this: shaky cam, shaky cam, slow motion action shot, shaky cam, shaky cam, exposition to move on the story, shaky cam, shaky cam, rinse, repeat.
The science of the movie is, of course, ludicrous, but that’s not a departure from the first movie. The surprising element, in my opinion, was that there wasn’t even more ridiculously unbelievable tech. In the first movie, they had nano-mites capable of reshaping people’s faces, gravity guns, and submarines that handled underwater as though they were fighter jets in the sky. So, when most of the guns fired in this film use regular bullets, for example, I was kind of surprised. Don’t worry though, there are plenty of dubious scientific claims used for their modern technology to go along with the random army of volunteers that Cobra has, always willing to throw their lives away for a new world order, and you’ve probably guessed about how much I love those as well.
Wrapping this section up, I have to say that I actually did enjoy watching this movie despite all of my complaints. It’s just all about the proper expectations, I suppose. This is an action film. There’s no mystery involved, and no thinking required. I’ll even go so far as to say that thinking is pretty much expressly forbidden. If you’re ready for that, you’ll have a good time. If you pay too much attention to the details, such as the science, the technology, the character motivations, the complete abandonment of both characters and story lines from the original movie, or really any particular aspect of this movie, you’ll probably regret spending your money on this one. My suggestion is to go in after a tough day at work so that you can check your critical faculties into the off position. Either that, or try to go in some sort of altered state. G.I. Joe: Retaliation is issued up a 2 out of 5 jugs.