G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra Movie Review

I went to see this G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, thinking I'm going to write my first negative review for this blog. I wasn't wrong. This movie is constant action and that's a bad thing. The audience is pounded into their seats with explosions and CGI effects. There's no room to breathe. The writing is stupid and the whole thing feels like a live action cartoon or an ad for G.I. Joe toys.

The movie starts with the beginning of Cobra, in the seventeenth century. James McCullen is punished with a metal mask because he's dealing arms to the English and the French. We flash forward to his descendant, James McCullen (Chrisotpher Eccleston) head of the the armament company MARS, who has just sold to NATO four missiles armed with nanotechnology. These nano-mites or micro-robots can eat through any metal and can also control human behavior. Wait a minute, I beginning to think this is a movie about the military industrial complex. Do you think with a name like MARS (Roman god of war), our leaders will figure out that this company is interested in propagating war? Um, no on both counts.

Anyway, Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Waylons) are assigned to transport the warheads. During the trip, they are attacked by Cobra agents led by the Baroness (Sienna Miller) They are unsuccessful in stealing the missiles when agents of G.I. Joe, an elite NATO unit, saves them. The Baroness returns to Scotland to encourage her husband to kill the King so he may assume the throne. Okay, that last part is the plot to Macbeth. Duke and Ripcord join Joe led by General Hawk. (Dennis Quaid)

Eventually, Cobra gets the missiles. They attempt to destroy Paris but are only able to topple the Eiffel Tower, thanks to a save by Duke. I'm really surprised that the French let Paramount film this goofy movie in Paris but remember the French think Jerry Lewis is a god. Anyway, Cobra launches the missiles at Washington and Moscow. Their plan is to cause chaos so the world will follow the U.S. President who will be replaced by one of their agents. Hold on, those crazy Birthers may have something here. Maybe Cobra planted fake news stories of Obama's birth in the Honolulu papers so they could put a Kenyan in the presidency. We've got to check his blood for micro-robots! Okay, you crazy Birthers don't get any ideas.

I'm not sure if Director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, Van Helsing) understands acting. I mean Quaid as Hawk merely mouths his lines in as macho manner as possible. You could have programmed a computer to deliver them. Sienna Miller struts around as if she were walking the runway at a fashion show. The humor, I hope it's humor, doesn't work because the film is so god awful stupid, you can't tell if the movie is serious. For example, a fight between a young Snake Eyes and Storm Shawdow in a kitchen is interrupted by Snake Eyes grabbing a biscuit to eat before he continues to pummel Shadow. And why do the women Scarlett (Rachel Nichols, the green Orion girl in Star Trek, Alias) and the Baroness not wear armor but those clinging black leather costumes that Diana Rigg made famous in the Avengers? Never mind, I get that one.

I really hope this movie does well. Seriously. I want Mel Brooks to do a spoof of it. Besides the movie ends with a cliff hanger with a fake President (Jonathan Pryce, probably saying to himself, "Wasn't I in Barbarians at the Gate?") now in office. Maybe G.I. Joe will demand his birth certificate. There are some good things about his movie. I love big battles with hundreds of actors. It's never boring but so is getting your teeth drilled without novocaine. The grade is "C."


Sienna Miller. Oh, that's why she's not wearing body armor.