G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Paramount Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 118 minutes


Click below to watch the G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra trailer.



A weapons dealer, Christopher Eccleston, whose company has supplied the U.S. military with weapons, has made some warheads with nanotechnology that eats metal. The G.I. Joe team must stop this turncoat and his Cobras from destroying the world's city capitals.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, based on the Hasbro Company toys and the comic book, is set in the near distant future, so the futuristic technology could be acceptable. Certainly the high energy digital effects make some of it acceptable. Otherwise, the technology detracts from the realistic version of the military that started out the movie if it was set today. The G.I. Joe team, that technically does not exist, is made of the best special operations soldiers from around the world - which differs from the comic of which the team was all-American special operations. This is a rather upsetting idea to me as the term "G.I. Joe" is a World War II term which referred to the American soldiers.

The best characterizations come from Channing Tatum as Duke and Sienna Miller as the Baroness - as well as the characters Snake-Eyes, Ray Park, and Storm Shadow, Byung-hun Lee. With so many characters, you never really get to know the other Joes or Cobras aside from the stars of the movie. The relationship with Scarlet, Rachel Nichols, and RipCord, Marlon Wayans, is different than their relationships in the comic and in the movie this relationship somehow demeans Scarlet as a person, although the women in the film are very smart. If they kept the relationship with Scarlet and Snake-Eyes, that would have developed both of these characters since Marlon Wayans has enough talent to develop his own character on his own if they had just let him go to town.

Rated PG-13 for violence. Running time: 118 minutes.

See book review:
G.I. JOE - THE RISE OF COBRA

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.