Movie Review: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

There are times when I question exactly how evolved a species man really is. Sure we’ve got opposable thumbs, fire, language, the use of tools, etc. and so forth, but put a pair of breasts in a push-up bra in front of us and we are reduced to blubbering idiots.

Director Stephen Sommers of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra seems to understand that fact very well. If you’ll think back to Deep Rising, his first hit, in which Famke Janssen runs screaming around a luxury liner in a wet tank top, or Mummy 2 where Rachel Weisz and Patricia Velasquez play out a centuries long cat fight, or Van Helsing with that fantastic pan up Kate Beckinsale’s legs… you see where I’m going with this, right? And unlike Michael Bay, whose female characters don’t really seem to graduate from pretty damsel in distress, Sommer’s leading ladies tend to kick ass.

If you’re a Scarlett/Baroness fan, or a Rachel Nichols/Sienna Miller fan, you’ll love this. The two lovely ladies get far more screen time than their male co-stars, and much of it is spent in skin tight leather and lycra. In fact, you may need to check yourself if you’re watching this with someone. Eyes will tend to gravitate towards the bottom of the screen whenever Nichols or Baroness gets a close up.

Even if you’re NOT an incorrigible horn dog, this movie is highly entertaining. Is it a great “film”. Not by any stretch. It’s not going to win any awards. The acting isn’t stellar. You’re not going to go “Wow! that cinematography was something, wasn’t it?” when you talk to people after. More than likely you’ll say something like, “Holy shit, man! Wasn’t that Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow fight great?!” to your geeky childhood friend or “Snake Eyes FTW!” on some forum board when you get home. There was a reason that this movie wasn’t screened for critics before it opened, and it’s not because the studio wants “audiences to define this film”.

This is a film for geeks who watched the TV series on Saturday mornings and learned their morals from Duke and Stalker and Lady Jaye. It’s a film for boys who begged their parents to buy them the USS Flagg or the Defiant playsets because Billy down the street got it for Christmas and it’s not fair that you don’t have one. It’s for people who know why the other geek in the audience is dripping coke from his nostrils after Hawk utters the line “… and knowing is half the battle”. If you’ve ever been to an Oscar Award winning movie or a foreign film fest and said to yourself, “I don’t get it…” then you’re probably inculded in the target demographic for this thing. Between the hardware, actions sequences, geek culture references, and impossibly pretty women, you’ll probably find something to float your boat.

Now if you went in thinking there was some kind of plot, forget it. The story is that an arms dealer (one guess who) has hired the Army to escort a case of special warheads and it’s stolen by an unknown group of well armed terrorists. The survivors are saved by a secret international anti-terrorist group and decide to join so that they can recover the weapons. It’s barely better than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, though Sommers’ storytelling skills are far superior to Bay’s, and the humor isn’t as low brow.

Casting is a little odd. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the Doctor (no not Mindbender) isn’t really that great. I can’t stop picturing him in 3rd Rock from the Sun, no matter how much he’s done since. The same goes for Christopher Eccleston, who will always be the 9th Doctor to me now. There are also a few cameos from the list of Sommers’ film alumni. Arnold Vosloo, Brendan Fraser, and Kevin J. O’Connor (who has been in every single Sommers flick I’ve seen except Mummy 2) all make an appearance. I also liked Byung-hun Lee’s Storm Shadow, and as a result, hope that some dude on the board gets tired of his Paris Pursuit version of the toy soon.

The Joes themselves are pretty good. The aforementioned Nichols is really why I paid to see the movie, and she’s worth the price. There’s something about redheads that just does it for me. Ray Park is Ray Park. Honestly speaking, the rest of them could have been anyone really and I wouldn’t have cared. I do love the fact that Jonathan Pryce is here. I mean how cool is that?

The only real thing I had a problem with is the clunky placement of the flashbacks. I won’t go into them in depth since there are nice little nods for long time Joe fans, but they kind of just feel slapped into places where some Joe is doing nothing. They don’t really fit (though they are nicely done). I’d hesitate to say it would have been better to just tack them on the beginning, because it might have made the movie more about one character rather than the team. It’s a small thing anyway, and since they’re pretty action packed, most won’t care they’re there.

So what are you waiting for? Tomorrow is the official opening day of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Go out and watch it. Bring the kids. Then go out and buy the toys. Then buy the toys for your kids. Then for your cousins. Then for your neighbors second cousins twice removed.

That way, Hasbro will bank obscene amounts of money and we’ll see a G.I. Joe 2.