Review, GI Joe: Retaliation

Good day all and happy April “Eff off and DIE!” day. I’m not going to waste my time with silly April Fools jokes. I had to work late last night and I’m to tired. Which brings me to the topic of this post. Because I had to work late, I went to see GI Joe: Retaliation last night.

This is the same movie that was yanked from the release schedule last summer and “reworked” a bit. Frankly, it needs more time in the oven I think. Still, it was a lot better then that drek from Stallone a couple of months ago. The movie picks up a few months after the end of the first GI Joe movie with “Zartan” now impersonating the President. The real president is being held captive by Zartan as a source of information. Zartan likes to tell the President that since he took over, the President’s approval ratings are up 9 points. (People like a president that blows stuff up)

Of course, Zartan isn’t impersonating the president just to make him look good. He’s there to make the world safe for COBRA of course. And now, a warning. Here be spoilers! Also the odd dragon may stop by as well.

Pakistan is in the midst of an insurrection of the assassination of the president. There is concern that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons might end up in the wrong hands, so the decision is made to “Send in the Joes.” Unlike the previous movie, the Joes here are more Americancentric rather then international. They also got rid of a lot of the scifi gear and weapons they used in the first movie. (Not all, but most of it) What they replaced it with was some ridiculous levels of martial arts action.

Anyone who knows anything about how military special operations units work was cringing at the antics of the Joes. Act of Valor this most definitely not. In any case, the Joes secure the nukes and are waiting in the middle of a desert for pick up. How they got from Pakistan to the middle of the Sahara desert is not explained, nor is it explained why they didn’t just fly the nukes to the nearest aircraft carrier like ANY OTHER SPEC OPS UNIT WOULD HAVE DONE!

Anyway, the Joes are sitting around waiting for pickup when the unit is attacked by a number of Apache helicopters. The entire unit with the exception of four people who who dive into a handy well are killed, including “Duke” who was the central character from the first film. (And good riddance I say!)

Back in Washington, Zartan announces the obliteration of the Joes after framing them for the murder of the President of Pakistan and the theft of the nukes. Where the Joint Chiefs of staff and the others in the military who actually knew what was going on were is also not explained. The four surviving Joes find their way back to the States and set up a base in an old gym.

While this is going on, Snake Eyes is brought to a secret prison in shackles, He is the one who was accused of the actual assassination of the Pakistani president. The warden greats Snake Eyes and basically brags about his prison. Snake Eyes is led into the “Cell block” which contains Cobra Commander and Destro. The Warden has Snake Eyes helmet removed and who is it but Storm Shadow, Snake Eyes arch enemy.

At this point there’s more silliness about the three Cobra villains being injected to a drug that prevents movement but leaves the prisoner awake. Storm Shadow stops his heart for a moment triggering a Code Blue ((Code Blue Alert)) and causing the prison medics to pull him out of his suspension tube. Storm Shadow restarts his heart and rips the guards apart. Outside the prison another Cobra bad guy, Firefly, blasts his way into the prison, takes the elevator down and blows everything up.

Storm Shadow frees Cobra Commander, but they leave Destro behind. Lots more explosions, but, as expected, the bad guys get away. Now the silliness really gets going. You may have seen the sword fight between Ninjas on the side of a cliff in the previews and commercials. This is very exciting and utterly maddening. No one in their right mind is going to be swinging along on a rope fighting someone with a sword. This is why they invented GUNS! So, you have Red Ninja’s swinging around fighting Snake Eyes and his new girlfriend on a 2000 foot cliff. Guess who wins?

The silliness continues. At one point “Firefly” gets into it with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He beats the crap out of Roadblock, (Johnson), who frankly should have been named “Speed bump” with the ass kicking he got. Firefly is about to finish off Roadblock when he gets run down by to other Joes in a pickup truck. Actually, he is thrown up and over the truck. (He should have gone under it) In any case, he picks himself up and escapes on his motorcycle. Excuse me? He gets run down by a truck and walks away? I don’t think so Tim! I’ve been hit by a car and I didn’t walk away for a week.

Now the Joes have figured out and proven that the president is actually an impostor. They meet up with Bruce Willis who helps them get organized for an attack to stop Zartan and save the real president. Zartan is hosting a meeting of the world nuclear powers to get them to disarm. More silliness here of course.

Zartan launches an all out first strike with the entire United States nuclear arsenal. The other countries retaliate and all out global thermonuclear war is started. Zartan tells them that he is going to show just how much he wants nuclear disarmament and self destructs all the missiles. He challenges the others to do the same, which they do. (North Korea was last)

An aside here. It is not possible for the President of the United States to initiate a first strike on his own. He has to have a second person agree that the launch is authorized. This is to prevent just what Zartan did. If the United States were under an all out attack, then this would be a different matter and the President can order a retaliatory strike on his own. So, those missiles are not going to fly.

The second problem was the self destruct. There is no such thing. Once the missiles take off, they are going to go boom somewhere. They don’t put a self destruct in them because they could be compromised and an enemy could order them to blow up.

Getting back to the other idiocies, Roadblock attacks three very silly looking Cobra tanks with a heavily armed dune buggy. This is a magic dune buggy. No matter what hits it, it doesn’t get destroyed. The Cobra tanks? Hit them with a .22 and KABOOM! Cobra should talk to their vendors about a refund for defective product.

After Zartan gets the other nations disarmed, he lets them know that there is going to be a new world order and in walks Cobra Commander. He tells them of a new weapon called Zeus which he demonstrates be destroying London. This weapon actually could work. The system is known as Project Thor ((Rods from God)). The level of destruction? That would require something either a little bigger or a lot faster. Cobra Commander then tells the other world leaders he wants them to acknowledge Cobra as the new world government with himself in charge. If they refuse, the rest of the capitol cities will be destroyed.

This is when the Joes attack. There are lots of explosions and gun fire with Ninjas slicing and dicing. Zartan gets whacked, and Roadblock goes after Firefly who has the control console for the Sues system. At one point Roadblock pulls a Browning M2 HB machinegun from it’s mount and fires it from the hip at firefly. Not to surprisingly, he misses.

Another aside here. What Johnson did was flat out impossible. That gun weighs over 80lbs. Even though this one had been rigged to fire blanks, you could see just how much trouble Johnson had controlling it.

In the end, he beats the crap out of Firefly and self destructs the Zeus system. (What the heck is it with all these self destruct systems and just how easy it is to actually use them?) Firefly pulls out one of his namesake mini-bombs, but when he reaches for the remote control, he can’t find it. Roadblock had grabbed it and sets off the bomb, blowing Firefly into teensy weensy chunks of stew.

The Joes are restored, the President is back in office and all is right in the world for the next sequel. So, did I like the movie? It was ok. It wouldn’t have bothered me a bit to wait until it hit HBO or Netflix. Do I recommend it? Yeah, if you like this sort of thing, then go ahead. However, do not expect anything in the range of Shakespeare.

Now for World War Z, (Another movie they pulled back from it’s original release date) and the new Star Trek movie.

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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