Movie Review: G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra
- Theatrical release date
- August 7, 2009
- DVD release date
- November 3, 2009
- Grade
- F-
They kick ass and take names, more or less, and completely fail to stop the bad guys. Go Joe!
The moment I knew I couldn’t keep this movie from getting an F was when, during a fight under the polar ice cap, someone yells, “Get out of here — the ice pack’s coming down!”
Wow, really? Now, this I gotta see! You know, to laugh at. Because, I’m afraid that, even in G.I. Joe-land, ice floats. It can cover the entire Arctic and it floats. It can be blown up into cube-sized pieces, and it floats. Heck, blow it up into pea-sized pieces…
You get the idea.
But this, basically, is why G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra makes Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen look like Shakespeare by comparison. It’s just so darn sloppy. For instance, the doomsday weapon of the movie has, basically, no safety devices to keep it from destroying the world. That is, once activated and exploded, the nano-technology released from the bomb will destroy everything (yes, everything) unless an operator with a kill switch stands nearby and sends the kill signal within sixty seconds. Hey, nothing could go wrong with that kind of security! If I were the bad guy willing to set off the device, I’d be so confident in my henchpeople that I’d have no worries about them failing to press the switch in time. They’d keep the nano-technology from spreading over the whole world and eventually devouring me as well. Wouldn’t they?
Clearly, the people developing the weapons aren’t very bright. If I ever commission a doomsday weapon, FYI, I will make sure it is self-limiting in scope unless I specifically override it with an ‘oh, go on, keep destroying everything’ switch.
As I said with my Transformers review, I expect little from a summer action picture. Noise, explosions, a moderately entertaining little plot that’s just enough to hold the action scenes together. Perhaps a few half-hearted attempts at character development could be thrown in when the explosions die down for a few minutes. With G.I. Joe, we get noise and explosions, but little else. Nothing makes sense. The bad guy can create a secret, yet hugely technologically superior, base without anyone figuring out where the GDP of the entire world went for the last decade? Nobody noticed all the computers and arms supplies (not to mention all the underwater construction equipment and their crews) going to the North Pole? And then the bad guy’s primary scientist complains about not having enough funding? The evil scientist turns evil because, um, he discovers that bad guys exist and do bad things? The bad guy finances the production of the nano-technology but then has to steal it to use it (why not just make it in your super-secret underwater base in the first place)? The good guys have their own super-secret base at least as cool as the bad guy’s, but we can assume that the governments of the world paid for its construction knowingly, even if they didn’t know exactly where it was located.
Plus, the entire plot, such as it is, is merely set-up for a sequel. The bad guy moves his chess pieces into place and the movie ends. Sure, the Joes collect the bad guy and his #1 henchman and put them in prison, but considering their performance so far, I have doubts they could keep a run-of-the-mill arsonist under wraps, let alone a pair of would-be Evil Overlords.
But even the chess game the bad guy is playing makes no sense. His plan is to move a lackey into position to take over being President of the United States (nano-technology has made him into a perfect double of the president), but for no discernible purpose. This particular lackey is the one person on the Cobra team that the bad guy does not have mind-control over, so if the lackey decides to go off on his own with a new plan, who’s to stop him? And after a decade of planning and the spending of trillions of dollars and the development of lots of ultra-cool technology just so you can instigate your evil plan, can you really leave said plan in the hands of someone outside your control?
That’s not evil. That’s just stupid. Which pretty much sums up this movie. For mindless summer fun, go see Transformers instead.
Copyright Martha Kneib. Published 1 September 2009 in What’s New.
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