GI Joe: Rise of Cobra

GI Joe: Rise of Cobra
Action / Movie / English dub
I viewed this movie in a theater.

Parental Warning: This movie is pretty safe for kids. Minimal adult language and blood. Lots of violence but it's action movie violence, not horror movie violence.

WARNING:  THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR STORY SPOILERS.

Plot Synopsis: A briefcase with weaponized nano-machine warheads inside is stolen by a terrorist organization hellbent on taking over the world. The GI Joe team is sent in to recover the warheads and stop the organization's evil plan. 

Story and Pacing:  3
The story was garbage. It seemed as if the story existed only to get you to the next fight scene which often left you feeling disappointed because the fight scenes typically ended with someone doing something unbelievably stupid. The GI Joe command structure is made to look like a bunch of imbeciles while the villains in the movie were evil geniuses capable of slaughtering anyone in their path... The food chain in this movie goes something like this...  

GI Joe heroes ~> Cobra Villains > Cobra expendables > GI Joe expendables.

You can predict how all but one of the fight scenes in the movie end by just looking at who has more heroes/villains present for the fight. To be fair, I don't exactly go to movies like this for the story but they failed to provide strong quality action sequences (though some are quite good) which is why this movie scored so low in this category and Transformers 2 scored relatively high.

Characters:  7
All the stereotypes are covered here folks. For the good guys you have the guy who can do everything perfectly (Duke), the screwup comedy relief (Ripcord), the ninja seeking to avenge the death of his master (Snake Eyes), the frigid ice queen lady (Scarlet), and the mousy computer nerd. For the villains you have the sane architect who plots every detail of his world domination plan (McCullen), the insane mad scientist (the Doctor), the conflicted villain who has to overcome some inner demons (and brainwashing) if she wants to save her former love (Baroness), the evil ninja who killed his own master (Storm Shadow), and the anarchist guy who loves to murder people (Zartan).

This movie wasn't exactly innovative with it's character development and design and I think the real problem is that it takes itself too seriously at times. Stereotypical characters can work, the GI Joe franchise is built on these kinds of characters however the movie tries to explain all their actions and motives which is like diving head first into the shallow end of a pool. That said the villains of this movie really steal the show and though there is not much actual depth to the characters the actors still managed to do quite a bit with what they were handed.

Oh and please note GI Joe fans, I'm when I say the characters are one dimensional I'm going on my very limited knowledge of the universe, I'm sure there have been many great stories/comics written to help that out however none of this really made it into the movie.

Acting:  6
The acting is inconsistent. There are only two people in the whole movie without a bad line... Snake Eyes, and a cameo guy I'll mention later. There isn't a particular actor/actress that is bad in this movie, they all are at times... but they they are also all good at times. I hate movies that are inconsistent because it's too hard to figure out the cause of the bad acting is. In the case of GI Joe I blame the script and writers. A lot of the time actors failed to be convincing but then what they were trying to say was often so over the top or random I don't think anyone could have been convincing under the circumstances. Just to note though, this is more a problem with the good guys than the bad guys.

Animation:  7
The computer graphics in this movie are excellent as far as actual quality goes but occasionally it feels slightly... off. It's hard to describe how but every once in a while it just feels like you're watching a video game instead of a movie, particularly when the nano-machines are destroying Paris (as seen in the trailer) and looks like a green cloud dissolving things... on the other hand the obligatory action movie chase scene is one of the best I've ever seen.

Production Value:  7
The movie feels rushed in many ways. Not enough polish was slapped on before they shipped it to theaters and that really takes a lot away from the movie. For the most part the quality is about average for a big budget action movie but it definitely could have used a couple re-shoots and re-writes.

Final Grade: 6.0

Personal Bias: 8
I saw the movie with the expectation that it would be fun. I like movies based on classic shows/toys/comics. I like it when movies are loyal to the storyline of the show/toys/comics even if it is to the detriment of the movie plot. It's entirely possible that because of my relative ignorance of the GI Joe universe I missed or didn't understand so some of my complaints above might actually be compliments.

What I Loved Most:

Snake Eyes puts the laugh into slaughter. This guy is a walking meat grinder, it doesn't matter who or how many people get in his way, they'll likely be dead within five seconds. I don't like Snake Eyes just for his action sequences, he's the only person in the entire movie with a shred of common sense. The flashbacks explaining how he became a ninja were interesting (turns out he's white) and do a good job explaining his world view and why he never speaks.

Shouldn't he be killing mummies? That's right, Brendan Fraser took some time off killing mummies to come train Duke and Ripcord.  

What's this one do? Experimental weaponry, nano machines, power armor, robot sharks, underwater secret hideout, the fastest jet ever... this movie has it all. Of course there are some inconsistencies... most of these gadgets are very powerful like the suit of power armor yet no one seems to to like actually using the technology. It's just confusing to me why you wouldn't pick the best weapon available every time you go on mission.

Evil villain is evil. The villains in this movie all manage to be evil for different reasons and to different extremes. One guy just likes killing... a lot. Another refuses to kill women. Another prefers to avoid any killing at all but will do what needs to be done. This among other things allows them to keep the movie relatively light (versus say... Sin City which is very heavy).

Storm Shadow had a busy childhood. The child actor who played young Storm Shadow was the same child actor who played the leader of “Flaming Dragon” in Tropic Thunder. Once I noticed this I kept hoping (Content warning:  Link contains lots of adult language, NWS) Les Grossman would call old Storm Shadow on his cell phone and start threatening him with a godly f***ing firestorm.


What I Hated Most:

You're supposed to laugh! The movie's humor falls flat 75% of the time. The theater I was in was stone silent. There are only one or two laughs to be had and it's not for lack of trying, half the time I'd see something that looked like it was supposed to be funny but I just couldn't bring myself to laugh.

Why would you do that?? Ripcord and Duke both take off their power suit helmets. One manages to let a ninja punch their lights out and the other gets a nightstick to the face from an unhappy French police officer. To be fair, one of them had a reason for taking his off but I think I would prefer to deal with the cracks in the helmet than taking off the piece of armor protecting the single most important part of your body.

Time to buy lottery tickets. The plan the villains hatch in this movie is so far out there that it's hard to believe anyone would have invested their time and money into something that had the same odds of succeeding as a person has of winning the lottery. Simply put, it relied too much on factors the terrorists could never manipulate. I wasn't looking for a real ground breaking plan but what they had was akin to making a long domino chain and if any one of those dominoes failed to knock down the next one in line the world domination plot would fail.

I thought they said they were guys who got the job done. Supposedly in GI Joe's secret base every human being is a is a GI Joe who passed their rigorous training and tests... yet whenever the GI Joe expendables fight either the cobra expendables or agents they die in droves.

I guess GI Joe doesn't teach things like taking cover, sounding an alarm when intruders enter the base (their natural instinct is to hide in the corner apparently), and guarding the command center. On top of all that their base has no meaningful security (aside from expendables with guns) once the villains are inside. For being the best of the best they sure do miss the basic skills that allow you to survive in a fire fight.

Don't worry, I've got a deus ex machina gun everything will be alright. One of the characters in this movie carries around the equivalent of Men in Black's “Noisy Cricket”. She uses this gun on people, armored military grade vehicles, power armor, and a glass ceiling all with roughly the same results. The cobra expendables carry around a rifle version of this gun. It's neat watching this technology in action but I got the impression the only reason it made it into the movie because showing the terrorists only strategy was walking in through the front door and shooting anything that moves... any concept of tactics was far beyond their grasp... but then the GI Joe team didn't really have any tactical sense either.

Closing Comments:
Over all this movie was a big disappointment to me. I don't regret having seen it but it wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be. It succeeds at being fun, but doesn't even begin to get good like Ironman, Transformers, and Dark Knight.

District 9

District 9
Sci-fi / Movie / English dub
Viewed a midnight showing.

Parental Warning: Violence, lots of blood, mild gore. There is a lot of adult language in this movie but because the guy doing most of the swearing has a South African accent all the words are pronounced differently and it almost seems cute... like if Elmo were to suddenly start dropping f-bombs.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR STORY SPOILERS.

Plot Synopsis: Aliens come to Earth and park their massive spacecraft over South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg. Humanity is initially afraid of the alien presence however after months of trying to communicate with the aliens they decide to forcefully cut their way inside and find malnourished, near dead aliens. These aliens are evacuated from their ship to a slum town which has been set up underneath the spacecraft. This place is called District 9.

Story and Pacing: 7
The story initially starts off moving very slowly, introducing you to what is probably the most annoying protagonist I've [i]ever[/i] seen in a movie, however after the first thirty minutes or so the movie speeds up and gets progressively more and more interesting. I didn't really know what to expect coming into this movie based on the trailers... I was prepared for something like a sci-fi thriller but really it ended up having a lot more action than I was expecting. The whole movie, but particularly the action scenes, had a certain raw quality to it as well and because some of the weapons were over-the-top alien technology it felt like watching someone else play a video game at times which to me is a good thing.

Characters: 10
I call this movie a character development epic. Peter Jackson introduced me to what is possibly the most annoying human ever to have existed and by the end of the movie I really liked him. Peter Jackson introduced me to the ugliest, most filthy aliens I have seen in recent times and by the end of the movie I was past the first impression and saw a desperate race of people trying to survive. As a race of individuals (like humans) they each had different ways of coping with their situation yet fall prey to group-think when in large crowds.

Not all the characters are multi-dimensional. One of the main villains in the movie (a Private Military Contractor (PMC) colonel) is annoyingly one dimensional but he is well acted and fits into his role within the movie perfectly. Character development happens on such a grand scale in this movie, most anime/tv series have less development over the course of a season than this movie does in two hours.

Acting: 10
The acting was very convincing which helped really gave credibility to the documentary feel they were going for with the movie. I felt that virtually all the actors in the movie did the very best they could with the script they were were given with very good results.

Animation: 7
In the areas where computer graphics are used and set construction this movie really shines. On the other hand the fight choreography feels a little off particularly in fire fights. There is a point in the movie where PMC troops are assaulting a base controlled by a human gang of sorts. They are portrayed as being very professional, taking cover, not wasting ammunition, doing all the things you'd expect professional soldiers to do but not even five minutes later these same guys end up fighting an alien power armor suit and suddenly nearly all the tactics go out the window. I would think the need to take cover and make yourself a hard target for a terrifying piece of alien technology would be even more pressing than against a couple guys with AK-47's.

Production Value: 7
The movie switches back and forth between a documentary style handheld camera view to a slightly less documentary style but still seemingly handheld camera view. It gets really confusing at times and the friend I went and saw the movie with complained about it afterwards. It gave the movie a unique feel but often times you'd see a character reacting to something off camera or shooting at something outside of the view which made certain scenes a little confusing.

Final Grade: 8.2

Personal Bias: 1
I had zero expectations going into this movie, in fact I was expecting to hate it based on trailers and previews I had seen. This movie far exceeded my expectations.

What I Loved Most:

The ending. This movie leaves a lot of questions unanswered however I didn't get the impression that they wrote the movie with a sequel in mind. It felt more like the original Matrix movie (versus the second Matrix movie) where you really felt somewhat content with how things were at that point and could fill in your own blanks and didn't necessarily need a sequel to tell you in great detail exactly what happens next.

Little guys can do big things too! There's one character in the movie which seems to be a baby or child alien that just seems so adorable in a strange way. The relationship between this alien and it's “parental unit” is a lot like (in my opinion) the relationship between Dilbert and Dogbert (or Ratbert).

Is this the blood explosion gun, or the push people through walls gun? There is a lot of alien technology in this movie, fortunately the aliens aren't too interested in using it, and humans can't use it so you're not flooded with crazy over the top stuff but rather more of a controlled flow... sort of like how in FPS games you have weapons introduced to you (mostly) one at a time as you advance through the story... it's a little like this towards the end of the movie.

Stretching your dollar. This movie was supposedly shot on a real low budget but covers that up well since everything looks trashed anyways. I was actually particularly thankful that the alien weapons just blew people up into blood splatter (no gore).

Politically independent. The political messages of this movie are anti-apartheid (South African segregation) and pro-human rights. It was nice not coming out of the theater feeling preached at.

What I Hated Most:

Unexplained insanity. There's a character in the movie who's crazy. He's this PMC Colonel and he hates the aliens. He loves killing the aliens. He doesn't even bother attempting to hide this fact because no one really seems to care about the aliens... uhh... “human rights”. I understand that there are people in the world who are crazy and hate other people because of their appearance or background but most people justify these thoughts. They don't just hate a race or interest group, they hate them because . The Colonel doesn't have a because. His wife wasn't killed by aliens, aliens didn't abduct and probe him at some earlier point in his life, aliens didn't even take his job... in fact he has a job because of them.

Did he just say funky butt loving? The main character of this movie is not a warrior, he is a corporate guy with no spine. That means when he is getting shot at he is freaking out for the most part which generally involves lots of swearing. Some scenes are him running along repeating the F-word over and over again though as I mentioned earlier it's pronounced in such a way that it sounds cute rather than profane (fooooooooooooook!!!) but just the same, some scenes felt like they were on permanent loop of him running down a hall way repeating the same word over and over again.

Closing Comments:
This movie is worth seeing for the character development alone. It's not quite an action popcorn movie like GI Joe or Transformers 2, but it does have action elements and is almost as fun to watch but has a much deeper message to it and a very clever way of communicating the message. You should see this movie if not in theaters definitely on dvd.