Saturday 30 March 2013

G. I. Joe: Retaliation

Certificate 12A, 110 minutes   ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Back in the day, GI Joe was the American version of what we called Action Man, a 12" action figure that many of us played with as kids (actually, Palitoy produced Action Man under licence from Hasbro, but let us not worry about such things). Then in the 1980s, Hasbro started producing the 3 3/4" line, which is what you see in the shops today.

G. I. Joe: Retaliation is a sequel to 2009s GI Joe; Return of the Cobra. It stars Dwayne Johnson, with Channing Tatum, Adrianne Palicki, DJ Cotrona, Jonathan Pryce and an extended cameo from Bruce Willis.

Zartan the shape shifter (Pryce) has taken over the White House and is holding the real president (Pryce) hostage. Johnson and the Joes are off on a ridiculously stupid mission stealing nukes from the North Koreans, when most of them are wiped out by an air strike courtesy of Zartan. The remaining Joes, along with a bunch of mystery ninjas now have to save the world, defeat Zartan and a bunch of mystery ninjas and restore the good pres.

The action sequences, fights etc were all well done; there's even a fight across a sheer cliff face on the end of climbing ropes. That pretty much is it for good points. The rest of the film is a confusing nonsensical illogical mess. I never did figure out the ninjas: at the outset I couldn't work out who were the good guys and the bad guys, and at the end I still couldn't work it out.

Channing Tatum had the right idea: Get killed off early on, then you can't be blamed for the rest of it.

On the plus side, My Cineworld card has paid for itself this month, with another DVD I can avoid buying. Chuck toys at each other and shout blam blam blam. 3/10


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