G.I. Joe: Retaliation

G.I. Joe: Retaliation - Dir. Jon M. Chu (2013)

Any self-respecting child of the 80's who had the misfortune to catch G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, couldn't help but leave the theater with a foul taste in their mouth. Paramount's clumsy attempt at turning Hasbro's famed toy line into a live-action franchise played fast and loose with the mythology as it careened through a nonsensical plot riddled with idiotic dialogue. Rise of Cobra earned a little over $300 million worldwide, just barely turning a profit on its exorbitant $175 million budget. It was still enough to greenlight a sequel with the studio taking much of the criticism to heart. G.I. Joe: Retaliation serves as not only a sequel, but something of a reboot and catch-all apologia.

This time around, the Joe team consists of Duke (Channing Tatum), Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Flint (D.J. Cotrona), and Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki). After retrieving a nuclear warhead stolen from Pakistan, the Joes are the victim of an airstrike that kills the majority of the team, including Duke. The attack was ordered by the President (Jonathan Pryce), who is actually Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) in disguise. Zartan proceeds to turn the country against the Joes and orchestrates the escape of Cobra Commander from a high-tech underground prison with the help of Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) and Cobra saboteur Firefly (Ray Stevenson). With the enemy now in the White House, Roadblock, Flint, and Lady Jaye seek the aid of the original Joe, General Joe Colton (Bruce Willis) to expose Cobra's Machiavellian plot. Meanwhile, Snake-Eyes (Ray Park) and his protégé Jinx (Elodie Yung) are dispatched to the Himalayas to hunt down Storm Shadow for the murder of their master.

Stephen Sommers and his brand of bland blockbuster filmmaking are gone. In his stead, Paramount has gone for an improbable choice in Jon M. Chu whose previous credits include Step Up 2: The Streets, Step Up 3D and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never as well as the Microsoft Surface commercials. His experience with directing elaborately choreographed sequences serve Chu well when it comes to Retaliation's numerous action scenes. By far, the best set piece where Snake-Eyes and Jinx clash swords with a cadre of red ninjas while swinging around snow-capped mountainsides. It feels like an entirely separate film within the film. Most of the other scenes involving shootouts or fistfights suffer from hyperactive camerawork. The Himalayan sequence is also the only section that benefits of the 3D post-conversion that shelved the picture from its original release date in August 2012. Despite rampant rumor mongering, Retaliation did not go through any extensive reshoots.

Another aspect Chu brings is a genuine love of the property to the point he used action figures to storyboard the action. The screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Zombieland and unproduced scripts for Deadpool and Venom) inject the sequel with more humor and faithfulness than its predecessor. The story skews much closer to the Marvel comics by Larry Hama, including an homage to the iconic "Silent Interlude" in issue #21. The Joes are more grounded as a Special Forces branch of the military rather than the cartoonish global peacekeeping force from Rise of Cobra. The vehicles in the film resemble the toys you might have collected, such as the HISS Tank, the AWE Striker, and the Water Moccasin. Cobra Commander has ditched the god-awful plastic mask for his classic chrome faceplate. Roadblock being a former chef and a hint of romance between Flint and Lady Jaye are thrown in for the die-hard fans.

While the story gains in reverence to the source material, it completely lacks in substance and coherence. The plot unfurls at lightning speed through the 90 minute runtime with no gravitas to any of the film's major moments. The convoluted backstory between Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes is shoehorned into the standard Cobra threatens to blow up the world scheme. The entire city of London is destroyed with little bearing because we are ripped away to the next scene. At one point, Storm Shadow is imprisoned and the guards bafflingly bring along his swords, then leave them right out in the open. Nearly everyone from Rise of Cobra has been ditched with no mention at all to their fates. They aren't missed with the exception of Rachel Nichols as Scarlett. However, her role is supplanted by Adrianne Palicki's Lady Jaye though there is little done to differentiate the two. Developing fully dimensional characters is hardly a priority. It's clear a lot of that stuff was cut out during the hiatus.

Only Roadblock makes an impression thanks to the charisma of Dwayne Johnson, who has become the go-to guy to resurrect flailing franchises. Besides already looking like an action figure brought to life, Johnson has an easygoing charm that meshes well with the surprisingly funny Channing Tatum. The repartee between Roadblock and Duke are some of the most entertaining in the movie, which suffers following Tatum's departure. However, you can't blame Tatum for wanting to move on to bigger and better things now that he's starring in Steven Soderbergh productions. Jonathan Pryce, one of the few actors to return, gets a much meatier role with a dual performance as the disheveled president and the villainous Zartan. Pryce is clearly relishing the deliciously evil one-liners given to him ("They call it waterboarding, but I never get bored."). The same goes for Ray Stevenson and Walt Goggins as a somewhat sadistic warden. Don't expect to see the lively Bruce Willis seen in Moonrise Kingdom or Looper. As Gen. Colton, Willis can hardly muster up an emotion aside from mild bemusement. RZA wins the award for worst performance due to his wooden turn as the Blind Master.

Paramount still doesn't hit the mark the second time around. G.I. Joe: Retaliation won't be mistaken for high art, but the sequel accomplishes its modest goal of being mindless entertainment.

Rating: ** (*****)

Legion

Legion - Dir. Scott Stewart (2010)


Throw another one onto the apocalyptic bonfire. A week after the release of The Book of Eli comes another end of the world action film. Zombies and vampires have had their turn, now here come the angels.

God has grown tired of mankind and orders his army of winged warriors to wipe them off the face of the Earth. One angel, Michael (Paul Bettany), disobeys his creator. He heads to the mortal realm, cuts off his wings, and loads up with automatic weapons. He makes his way to a diner called Paradise Falls in the middle of nowhere. There, he must protect Charlie, the waitress (Adrianne Palicki), and more importantly, her unborn child who is destined to lead humanity into greatness.

What transpires is a biblical version of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 with Michael and a ragtag group of humans defending the diner from an onslaught of possessed humans and the vengeful angel Gabriel (Kevin Durand). Among those diners are Bob Hanson (Dennis Quaid), the hardnosed owner; his son Jeep (Lucas Black) who pines away for Charlie; Percy (Charles S. Dutton), the one-handed cook; Howard & Sandra Anderson (Jon Tenney & Kate Walsh) and their daughter Audrey (Willa Holland); and Kyle (Tyrese Gibson), a passer-by who asks for directions.

You’d think a movie about the end of days and angels with machine guns would be pretty exciting. Alas, Legion starts off strong, sags in the middle, and peters out at the very end. The film’s best and most memorable scene comes early when the diners are attacked by a little, old lady (“You’re baby is going to fuckin’ burn!”). Nothing else in Legion lives up to that moment. The movie grinds to a halt with a second act bloated by endless exposition and a half-assed attempt at character development with scene after scene of the diners getting to know each other. While admirable, their backstories are so clichéd that they still remain paper thin which means valuable smashing time is wasted with talk, talk, talk.

In the pantheon of angel movies, Legion is definitely superior to that horrible John Travolta film, but isn’t nearly as good as Wim Wenders’ classic Wings of Desire. Though Wings probably would have been even better if the angels in it had machine guns too.

Rating: * ½