Channing Tatum and Dwayne Johnson (Jaimie Trueblood/Paramount Pictures)The banners of arch nemesis Cobra Command unfurl on the South Portico of the White House in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the second big-budget movie in as many weeks to depict the presidential mansion under attack. But the movie saves one of its most potent attacks for a defenseless victim: geographical logic. Thus, a chief of staff leaving a “card game in Georgetown” descends the majestic steps of an obviously shuttered neoclassical monument that looks like DAR Constitution Hall. I wish that were the most ridiculous sequence in the movie. This action-packed but curiously boring two-hour commercial is long on incoherent destruction and short on logic and a compelling structure on which to plaster its 3D mayhem.
Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki), a member of the elite military unit known as G.I. Joe, looks at herself in a cloudy mirror and tells fellow member Flint (D. J. Cotrona) about her struggles for respect in the field. As Jaye tells a bitter story about a stern father’s refusal to treat his career-minded daughter seriously, she changes her clothes with her back to Flint. Resourceful Joe that he is, Flint spies her reflection in a monitor and checks out her ass. Such is the message for the kids sent by the second installment of a Hasbro franchise that brings classic action figures to live-action life.
As a 10-year-old boy, before I was aware of the possibility of well-crafted exploitation that I discovered when I first saw Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls a few days after I turned sixteen, I might have seen the parade of military explosions and stealth ninjas and voyeurism and thought, wow, that’s baaaaad! As an adult, my response to this uninspired kablooie is simply, “That’s BAD.” I’m convinced that if its screenwriters went back in time, any time, and eavesdropped on a couple of kids playing with their G.I. Joe action figures, their notes would with little embellishment make a more exciting and coherent entertainment. Failing that, they could just have just made a live-action version of the awesome 1987 animated feature G.I. Joe: The Movie (you can watch it in its entirety here). As this year’s slate of lousier and lousier action movies sadly attests, money can’t buy a good movie.
(Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount Pictures)Forces for good battle an evil organization, and I guess you can tell the good guys from the bad guys by the fact that the former use cupcakes for target practice. But unrepentant killing is the m.o. for both sides. The twist in this episode is the mysterious behavior of the U.S. president (Jonathan Pryce, returning from 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra). You see, Pryce is really the evil genius whose name sounds like an antihistamine. Zarar, no doubt at the behest of a soul-sucking pharmaceutical industry, is a master of biochemical disguise, and under the aegis of his Presidential powers he orders the destruction of the Joes. The government-against-the people plot line would be a prescient and subversive reference to drones if it, you know, resolved to stop the violence or something.
Director Jon Chu previously helmed a pair of Step Up movies (the weakest of the franchise) and a Justin Bieber documentary. I didn’t care for the hip-hop choreography showcased in Step Up 3D, but if he has any talent shooting well-coordinated stunts, it’s evident in a long, elaborate set piece in which silent ninjas zoom around a precarious mountain lair. The sequence is even better for its lack of badly written dialogue, though one has to give props to RZA’s appearance as a Blind Master ninja. The Wu Tang patriarch has devoted his music and now film career to the martial arts and chinoiserie, and his performance, however incongruous, has a kind of fanboy excitement that would have served the rest of the movie’s players well.
Last year, Pryce starred in BAM’s revival of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker. The dual role of impostor and actual president lacks Pinter’s menacing verbal rhythm, but Pryce makes it watchable. Dwayne Johnson looks more at home here than he did in last month’s action-drama Snitch. And that’s about it. There’s ultimately little to defend in this two-hour gastrointestinal nightmare, the worst movie I’ve seen so far in this year of bad Hollywood product.
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Directed by Jon M. Chu
Written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick
With Dwayne Johnson, D.J. Cotrona, Channing Tatum, Jonathan Pryce, and Bruce Willis
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of combat violence and martial arts action throughout, brief sensuality and language, and graphic ridiculousness.
Running time: 110 minutes
