‘G I Joe: Retaliation’ Review Roundup
G I Joe: Retaliation opens tonight in theaters, but the critics have already reviewed it. See what they said about the latest film below.
The second film in the G I Joe live-action franchise takes the cast of the first one and practically throws it out the window. Was that a good idea, or a bad move?
G I Joe: Retaliation stars Dwayne Johnson (Fast Five, The Scorpion King), D.J. Catrona, Byung-hun Lee, Adrianne Palicki, Ray Park, Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest), RZA, Ray Stevenson (Punisher: War Zone, Thor), Channing Tatum (Magic Mike, 21 Jump Street), Elodie Yung (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Bruce Willis (Die Hard, RED), and Walton Goggins, and is directed by Jon M. Chu. Zartan has taken over as the President of the US and is destroying G I Joe from the inside, beginning with killing off most of the original cast. It’s up to the rest of them to find out what went wrong and fight for their very existence.
If you loved G I Joe: The Rise of Cobra, you might enjoy this film. With Dwayne Johnson all over the advertising for this film, it’s pretty much telling you they cast him to bring in whatever audience they could salvage from the last one. And much like his roles in The Expendables and Live Free or Die Hard, Bruce Willis isn’t really adding anything here other than to get his fans into theater seats. Don’t expect much of a story, as everything in Retaliation is calibrated to snare a 13-year-old’s attention span.
Unlike Jon M. Chu’s directorial style from Step Up 3D, G I Joe: Retaliation glides by on choppy cuts that deliver quite the opposite effect. And what was Fantastic Four‘s strength (or weakness, depending on who you ask) doesn’t work so well here, as the family-centered opening act is waterlogged with tedious exposition and comedic banter between Duke and Roadblock.
The ninjas seem like filler for the rest of the film, to allow the Joes time to lick their wounds and figure out how to get to the alleged president. Every ten or 15 minutes, it seems they have to throw in some ninjas as if to say, “Hey, pay attention to me a little longer.”
What do you think of G I Joe: Retaliation?
