Director: Stephen Sommers
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayans, Sienna Miller
In Cinemas: 6 August 2009
REVIEW:
Let’s start with a little exercise. I’d like you to pretend you’re at a party; a housewarming or something casual like that. You’re sitting on a comfy couch, a couple of friends on either side, a drink in your hand. At this very moment you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. It’s cold outside and there’s a fine drizzle of rain, but it’s toasty-warm inside, there’s plenty of snacks on the coffee table in front of you and since you’re on your third drink, you’ve developed quite a happy attitude.
Suddenly there’s a loud knock on the door and before anyone gets a chance to open it, a rather large guy kicks it down and walks inside, announcing at the top of his voice “I’M HEEEEEREEE”. No one pays him much attention so he looks around for a place to sit and damnit, there’s a spare couch opposite you. He lumbers across, throws his bag down on the floor (a bunch of beer bottles clang around inside) and shakes your hand, way too hard. He asks you what you do for a living, but doesn’t really listen to your answer, preferring to talk about himself and all of the amazing things he does; most of which sound like lies to you. He eats all of the snacks on the coffee table, drinks down a bunch of beer and then throws up all over the couch. Every time you attempt to leave the couch he grabs a hold of you and pulls you back “WHERE YA GOIN?” he shouts. At the end of the night he sleazes onto a girl and falls asleep with his shirt off – no one knows why.
If the new G.I JOE was a person, it’d be this guy.
The Rise of Cobra is a movie that I probably would have loved when I was 8 years old, only to look back on it as an adult and wonder how I could have sat through it (I had that experience recently with Short Circuit and it was heartbreaking!). It’s loud, it’s bright, it’s full of hammy dialog and while I didn’t enjoy the experience at all, I can’t fault the film because it achieves exactly what it set out to do; provide an hour and a half of dumbed down science-fiction action.
The G.I JOES (Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity) are an elite military unit, seemingly operating from underneath Egypt somewhere. Their mission is to exceed where others fail, to bring down terrorists that – for some weird reason – no other army from any other country is aware of. There’s a bunch of futuristic weapons, technology which doesn’t make sense and a bad guy who wants to rule the world by selling nano-technology and replacing the president of the United States with one of his minions. It’s a paint by numbers action blockbuster which borrows sequences from Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, and is actually more enjoyable than Bay’s 10 hour Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen.
You know what to expect, in other words.
The acting is nothing special; lead Channing Tatum (playing Duke) looks like he’d rather be at the gym the whole time. Dennis Quad offers a serviceable performance as General Hawk, but there’s nothing emotionally engaging about anyone in this.
If you go into this film wanting anything other than eye candy, then you’ll be disappointed. Luckily, the special effects look amazing for the most part. An entire city/military complex under a polar ice cap is quite breathtaking and brings to mind images from the 2007 game Bioshock.
If you’re looking for an hour and a half of mindless escapism, then you’ll probably enjoy G.I Joe. There’s nothing new here, but it does the job quite well. If you have an 8 year old son, brother, cousin, friend, then they’ll love it. For the rest of us, I’m not so sure.
While we’d like to tell the annoying guy at the party to shut up, and ask why does there have to be someone like you at every party? We all know that it just wouldn’t be a party without him. It wouldn’t be a summer movie season (or winter for us Aussies) without a few big dumb blockbusters and G.I JOE does succeed where the others have failed.
Unfortunately, with District 9 now screening, you have no reason to see Rise of the Cobra. Seriously, see District 9 instead.
Two stars.
A final note, I think G.I JOE has the potential to become a great drinking movie when it’s on DVD, take a drink for every time you see something which was in TEAM AMERICA.