Review of G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) by Quincytheodore — 16 Apr 2013

Mixing together wuxia levitation and marine bravado, G.I. Joe: Retaliation is incessantly loud, gleefully ridiculous and completely deprived of focus in its story. It has action sequences peppered in rapid shady construct to instill tension, but ultimately falls short to save the big picture. The impact of any carnage supposedly to enthrall audience is lost merely minutes after it happened, as if the movie just wants to push the next big action scene in which there are abundance of mandatory loud explosions, bullet showers and plus a legitimate reason for blade battles.

Story is muddled past the half hour mark, it tries to show different plots of many characters almost at the same time. This could've been good, but the result is a heavy-handed storytelling as many scenes are excessively hurried to catch up with the others. Not to mention, a few instances where convenient plot devices are stringed together in hope to accomplish some sort of consistency. Approaching the end, it flutters into noisy, once again, multiple complicated brazen action scenes with many loose ends simply swept under the rug. Audience would probably not care much for characters aside from their slow-mo cinematic walk.

Many stars grace the movie, although majority of the burden falls on Dwayne Johnson. He's quite the marine type and frankly has star quality, which sadly undermined by the hammy script or forced scenes. His bits in WWE is much more compelling and interesting that his theatrical role here. Channing Tatum and Bruce Willis make appearances, although not that much or fascinating in that matter. A couple of eye candies and Asian swordsmen give more eclectic vibe, though sometimes they do feel unnaturally thrown together only for that very purpose.

Fortunately, the action itself is enjoyable enough. Fights are splendidly done, they are overblown but melee has controlled pace, if not too much slow-mo boom. I personally like the addition of parkour to shooting, which makes it more fluid and relies less on random barrage. Plenty of carnage in scenery as well, even if there's little to none time to dwell on the impact, similar to the level of catastrophic movie. Its choreograph might not be the best, but it could certainly delight action film fans.

There's little substance to plot, never expected it anyway. It ambitiously gives audience too many plots it could convey. Action is arguably very video game inspired, and while it's not without merit, it does not save the movie entirely. G.I. Joe: Retaliation is a very crass, clamorous and too comical for its own good.