Wednesday, August 12, 2009

G.I Joe: Rise of Cobra

I think a great place to start my blog is with one of the movie events I’ve spent years preparing for, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. Now I had seen the same weak trailers that you did leading up to its release and I admit it did not look promising, but being born in the 80’s (and being a childhood fan) it was my duty to embrace the film. So I saw it and I liked it much more than the critics who slammed it. Let’s start with the weak points. The dialogue was absolutely terrible, especially in the first half of the film. A bunch of cheesy one-liners and over the top acting often overshadowed what was meant to draw in the viewer, and Denis Quaid, I expected more from you. You were awesome in the cinematic epic that was Parent Trap but the performance as General Hawk… terrible.

In all seriousness, I think the script got stronger over time and I did get into the movie. Every scene that Snake Eyes (Ray Park), or Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) were featured in proved visually impressive. That accented with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s strong yet underutilized performance as the beginnings of Cobra Commander made the movie memorable. And who saw Sienna Miller, and Marlon Wayans coming? For the first time these two make a case that they belong in movies as legitimate actors. It’s not like either of them are going to win an Oscar but still, I’ll take it.

So I enjoyed the film and look forward to the inevitable sequel, which hopefully has a new director that can better handle the big name cast. Fortunately, I have season one of the G.I Joe cartoon on dvd and the 1987 animated movie to hold me over. (7 out of 10)

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