"G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" (2009) - Movie Review

G.I. Joe’s tentacles of this action glorification spread through the globe that did not miss to reach through the graveled roads in the streets of the native in the southern India. I never followed that but the toys were kid’s magnet for the fantasy of action. The cartoons came sporadically in the television. What the film gives is exactly a fan would love to see. Gadgets that is well across the Lord of the Rings supernatural tricks and the constant booms and bangs. But it is sad spectacle for the ensemble casts sputtering ruthless and lazy words by the screenwriters Stuart Beattie, David Elliot and Paul Lovett.

Not knowing the characters, I was not eager for the paper images to draw out of it over the film. The deal with the bases put me to investigate on the process of its building. The head base of G.I. Joe team is this gigantic underground facility in a desert covered with mountains of sand. When the soon to be recruits Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) get through the elevator seeing the water fights and the play ground for combat and hundreds of soldiers, I was thinking how did they manage to bring the raw materials to build these? Wasteful exercise yet funny to thing about. When they took the entry point which they rightfully call “Iris” part in the desert amongst the Egyptian pyramids, the tourists would have wondered, “Wow they are going to build a theme park by this side”. So much for secret organization.

“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” shows how much embarrassment and the catharsis the actors would never get when we see Dennis Quaid as General Hawk orders and pumps the fist when his team is making a killing in the field. With rest of the young actors, they have a long way to go and this is the en route towards further films for their career but for Quaid, it is humiliation. He should have thought twice or may be every day at the set of this film to reevaluate his decision. It is too late now. There is no undoing of this abysmal performance.

So many ardent fans with their hands on the hips with anger on their face would question me, “So? What would you do knuckle headed self righteous brat?”. For starters, I would have made it a high octane comedy action, over the top “Shoot em Up” kind of action. It should have been a series of so badly orchestrated fun and the style should have been cooler than gadgets. Finally, some committed performance which I could very much understand in the actors as they have to shoot through the air and spray across the courageous dialogues of insignificance.

Stephen Sommers though knows how to earn the profit out of this and go towards another destined fiascos through sequels. They rummage through the city of Paris and make a mess out of it. If the Cobras are bad enough in destroying the cars and everything that comes their way, the Joes are another level to adding up the mess. Duke and Ripcord are happy as a cow getting into the omnipotent suit to do super human acrobatic stunts with no shed of energy as it appears.

If there was some arc and soul of fun in the film, it has to be Marlon Wayans who manages to alter between comedy and seriousness with his crush Scarlett (Rachel Nichols). He seems to be more than he is known for. No one can forget his performance in “Requiem for a Dream” and it is ironic that the casting of this film recruited based on that performance. Here his comic relief is the only gap to get some fresh air out of this.

“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” will have equipments of implausible stretches of imagination which becomes a path for the predictable route for an action film. Money has been poured and it will be earned back in the box office but the non-existent intelligence in the story was neither invested nor produced. Sometimes watching films like this coming out and reaping the money irks the conscience. Not because it is a cheap fun but it is a very dishonest, lethargic and insincere film making to work on a business model than a faintest presence of art.