GI Joe doesn't suck; that may sound like faint praise, but in the heat of summer blockbuster season, you really can't tell from big names, big budgets, or big promotional efforts. And yes, I sat through the Transformers sequel, so I know whereof I speak.
Paramount has made the odd, less than fully explicable decision to avoid bad reviews by refusing a critics' screening in advance of GI Joe; that means my review arrives slightly ahead of the New York Times. And if any film could make an argument for defying the need for critics, I'd say GI Joe was it... but you just don't avoid critics unless you've got a dog on your hands... so the question is... why does Paramount think GI Joe is a dog?
Perhaps the problem is multifold: lacking big names, and seemingly out of step with the times, GI Joe arrives big, to some degree bloated, and often working at cross purposes to itself. A war movie that can't quite commit to the idea of war, a pricey special effects effort that seems to want to be smaller and more intimate, GI Joe seems like your basic defense department boondoggle: a good idea morphed into unrecognizability when designed by committee.
Perhaps a simpler answer is: GI Joe is a live action Team America: World Police, done for serious, and lacking any explosive, indecent, puppet-like sex.
Team America, the puppeted spoof of jingoistic, rah rah action blockbusters is of course a cult favorite, and GI Joe shows either moxie or tone deafness in recreating that films opening disaster as a serious event: that is, the bombing of the Eiffel Tower causing widespread panic and destruction in Paris.
(GI Joe, by the way, is the kind of movie that tells you a scene is taking place in "Paris, France"... as if we were thinking of some other Paris.)
It's a shame to be too dismissive though... because GI Joe is, well, not bad: with a more coherent storyline and better than average performances, there is really something here, and it is, generally, satisfying from start to finish without especially losing its way.
GI Joe, in this adaptation isn't a character; it's a description of super secret fighting force, housed in a massive base under the Egyptian desert, including the "best of the best" of fighters from around the world; mostly though, they seem American plus a smattering of a few foreign "types" much like our "coalition" in Iraq. This secret force does pitched battle with a dangerous cadre of weapons merchants and mercenaries (who are not, actually, named "Cobra" making the film's subtitle about "The Rise of Cobra" especially dense).
Is this preposterous? Sure, on many levels; it's comic book and over the top and unbelievable... but then, that's the current state of popular popcorn pleasures, and GI Joe makes mre of it work than you'd expect, though the truly obssessive will find all sorts of reasonable questions to raise (along the lines of "why is there a trash compactor in the Death Star" objections to Star Wars... or the general failure of "evil villain lairs" to have security systems or backup plans).
Then to, the performances are better than average: Channing Tatum may be famous mainly for lunky beauty, but he gives good, straight arrow conviction; and Sienna Miller - who can't seem to catch a break in finding potential stardom - does a lovely job as the villainess love interest. Then there's Joseph Gordon-Levitt doing a more credible return to form as psychotic mad scientist than his recent turn as romantic lead. Throw in Jeff Bridges as General Inspiration P. Mentor (i'm sure it was something like that), and other big name cameos... and you get a surprisingly crisp ensemble.
The film is also handsome looking with a real sense of movement; director Stephen Sommers, of the Mummy series and craptastic Van Helsing, reins in his usual love of noisy battles for sheer volume, and actually gets his action sequences to deliver (much like the original Mummy). And he's got more sensitivity to actors than you usually find in these exercises.
But still... at heart GI Joe is a war story and the film is a war movie, and it's not clear - with only Transformers glaring as an exception - that war movies have broad appeal. Moreover, what could - and probably should - have a lot of jingoistic America cheering seems terribly muted. GI Joe is, still, a uniquely American icon, and to try and avoid that smacks of a kind of embarrassment that's probably fatal to the film's success. Either embrace the history... or don't bother. Sure, too much championing of the American soldier might dampen international box office... but if GI Joe has dud-like qualities, it's the sense that few audiences may know who to root for in a NATO based battle between good and corporate.
Which is a shame; I wish more people gave Tatum, particuarly, a look as the new style leading man. He really has the goods, and GI Joe works, in large measure, because he brings it well. Preposterous, silly, but perhaps well intentioned, GI Joe doesn't deserve to be labeled a disaster. It's got the Boom Boom Pow... it's just not, perhaps, so 3008.
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