G.I.JOE
PARAMOUNT
RELEASED 7 August 2009
I can’t remember an action movie that has ever been so finely targeted at teenage boys. ‘GI Joe’ contains more action, more cleavage, and more merchandising possibilites than any movie this summer. It barely matters that script, story or basic logic exist in the ‘GI Joe’ world. This movie is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to two boys bashing toy soldiers into each other and then flying planes around their heads with ‘whooshing’ noises. I spent two hours in the cinema wondering if I was having a flashback to my eight-year old self.
Quite unexpectedly, we begin in seventeenth century Scotland, where a member of the McCullen clan is being encased in an iron mask because of his double-dealing in weapons. We soon discover that the modern-day descendant of the McCullen’s is going by the name of Destro, and he’s played by Doctor Who - I mean Christopher Eccleston. And he has a very thick Scottish accent to cover his Manchester accent. I hear you - why didn’t they just hire a Scottish actor? Who knows. In a hugely entertaining piece of movie fiction, the filmmakers appear to have invented an ancient Celtic word meaning ‘fire’. An invented Scottish word, invented by an invented Scottish person. There must be an arcane logic somewhere! A snarling and barking Eccleston is actually a pretty good ‘kid-friendly’ bad guy as the leader of the ‘evil empire’ that will become ‘Cobra’. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays his mysterious, scarred science expert.
Destro is out to get four secret warheads that have the power of nanobytes (tiny little robots). When one of these warheads strikes a target, the nanobytes begin to eat everything in their path, only stopping when they are remotely terminated. Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) are part of an army convoy ferrying the warheads, and Destro sends his minion The Baroness (Sienna Miller) and her Stormtrooper-style goons to get them. After an intense, devasting attack, Duke and Ripcord are saved by Snake Eyes, Scarlett and Heavy Duty, members of an elite Egyptian-based outfit known as GI JOE (Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, affectionately shortened to ‘Joes’). Here they are taken to a mammoth secret underground base called ‘The Pit’ and trained up to recover the nanobyte nukes. A cameoing ‘Mummy-hunter’ Brendan Fraser pops up in the training montage sequence. The rest of the movie is non-stop action as the ‘Joes’ attempt to prevent Destro using the nukes on the world.
So what else is there to say about ‘GI Joe’? Well it features our very own Jonathon Pryce as the US President, in a casting move obviously taken before the recent election. The whole movie is really just one big CG-enhanced action scene after another, and on this criteria, the movie succeeds. Probably the best set-piece is in Paris as the ‘Joes’ get to wear ‘acceleration suits’, effectively turning them into superheroes as they run alongside moving traffic, leap through bus windows, dodge rockets, and bounce from moving cars to moving car. After destroying the Eiffel Tower and countless other property, the GI Joes get themselves barred from France.
Although teenage boys will love ‘GI Joe’, featuring more gadgets and action they could ever dream of, there really isn’t much else here for adults. The script is terrible, the plot is paper-thin, there is no character development, and it’s incredibly loud - for two hours. Saying that, I did enjoy the preposterousness of it all, and if you can (or accompanying kids, have to) tap into your eight-year old self, then it’s just a bit of silly fun. Hey, some of it’s so silly, it’s actually funny.
TWO OUT OF FIVE