GI Joe: the review (Reuters)

[waichingliu81]

"G.I. Joe" should be court martialed
1 hour 41 mins ago

The latest action franchise seemingly designed to further spread the incidence of ADD among youth the world over, "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" plays like a sequel to a film that was never made.

Opening Friday without being screened in advance for critics -- probably a wise move because most of them have a mental age of over 10 -- the Paramount release film should achieve its main goal of provoking sales of the venerable Hasbro toys upon which it's based.

Channing Tatum and Marlon Wayans play Duke and Ripcord, two young soldiers recruited by the international G.I. Joe military force to help save the world. Their nemesis is the evil organisation Cobra (presumably an offshoot of SPECTRE), and a sinister Scottish arms dealer (Christopher Eccleston, letting his thick brogue do the work for him) who has created a deadly weapon that has the ability to disintegrate everything it touches.

Led by a John Wayne-channeling Dennis Quaid as the suitably macho-named Gen. Hawk, the G.I. Joes include a representative cross sample of wisecracking heroic types, including weapons specialist Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, far less intimidating here than in "Oz"); the sexy Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), who disdains emotion but doesn't mind displaying plenty of cleavage; the requisite ninja warrior, Snake Eyes (Ray Park); and technology expert Breaker (Said Taghmaoui).

On the villainous side are Duke's former flame, Ana (Sienna Miller), whose move to the dark side is signified by the dying of her formerly golden blond tresses to black, and her brother, Rex (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, sacrificing years of hard-won indie credibility with a single paycheck), whose similar waywardness is conveyed by his disfigured face and raspy voice.

Not that the characters matter, because the screenwriters and director Stephen Sommers ("The Mummy") are determined to mainly deliver one high-octane, heavily CGI-laden action set piece after another, to ultimately deadening effect. The best of these is a breathlessly staged sequence in which Duke and Ripcord, wearing special suits that enable them to move at fast motion, attempt without much success to prevent most of the city of Paris, including the Eiffel Tower, from being destroyed.

"The French are pretty upset," a White House aide then informs the president (Jonathan Pryce) in an example of the screenplay's laughable dialogue.

Sommers has employed "Mummy's" villain, Arnold Vosloo, to play a similarly menacing if less-memorable character here and also has recruited Brendan Fraser for a less-than-stirring cameo appearance.

After 118 minutes of nonstop mayhem, the film ends on a surprisingly muted note, though pains have been taken to make sure that the hoped-for sequel has been carefully set up.

(Editing by DGoodman at Reuters)

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090807...e-5fdf947.html

[JamesG]

Movie Reviews: G.I. Joe
10 August 2009 12:03 PM, PDT

In the end, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra got just the kind of scathing reviews that Paramount executives had expected.

Manohla Dargis in the New York Times suggested that the execs who opted not to show the movie to critics were just being "pragmatists and must have smelled the stench long ago, then again ... this pricey, juiceless pulp could never have been killed by critics, simply because it was already dead."

Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News commented that the movie enters "the annals of inane summer would-be blockbusters that make your brain bleed."

Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times remarked dourly, "It is sure to be enjoyed by those whose movie appreciation is defined by the ability to discern that moving pictures and sound are being employed to depict violence."

But David Hiltbrand in the Philadelphia Inquirer suggested that the movie succeeded in its goal. "G.I. Joe's mission," he wrote, "is to provide moviegoers with bang for their buck. And in this it succeeds. ... Ok, it's seriously deficient in plot or acting. But in this genre, those two ingredients are as superfluous as canoes in a desert."

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