G.I. JOE: RETALIATION

Paramount Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 110 Minutes



Click below to watch the G.I. Joe: Retaliation trailer.



In Paramount Pictures G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the G.I. Joe team has been wiped out and the few survivors, Dwayne Johnson, D.J. Cotrona, and Adrianne Palicki go underground determined to find out why.

In this sequel, G.I. Joe: Retaliation seems like a more adult version of of the prequel G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - despite the James Bond type of plot. A crawl at the beginning of the movie introduces the concept of G.I. Joe with Channing Tatum in command. Tatum and Johnson's relationship was great, not just as Joes, but as friends as well. The ninja scenes with Storm Shadow - Byung-hun Lee - and with Snake Eyes - Ray Park - and Jinx - Elodie Yung -  were great, especially when compared with the military action scenes. My favorite scene was with Storm Shadow/Lee and Snake Eyes/Park when they first meet each other. While Snake Eyes is not supposed to talk, I am looking forward to when martial artist stuntman Park actually gets a speaking part.

After a mission in Pakistan to confiscate nuclear warheads from terrorists, the Joes are wiped out in a military strike by Cobra. Storm Shadow/Lee rescues Cobra Commander, Luke Bracey with the voice by Robert Baker, from prison - while Snake Eyes/Park and Storm Shadow/Lee's cousin Jinx/Yung go after Storm Shadow/Lee. The Joe survivors from the military strike seek help from the original Joe - General Joseph Colton, Bruce Willis, in order to stop Cobra.

I have always felt that with Jonathan Pryce as a Welshman, Pryce was not an appropriate actor to be President of the United States. Certainly, Pryce did not have the presence to be President and was a little goofy. It was hard for me to believe Pryce as the leader of the free world. There is a worldwide presence to the movie that gives the movie more of a scope than what you might think of when watching this movie and adds to the James Bond feeling of the movie. The use of orbital kinetic bombardment weapons is interesting, especially since the military concept has been around since the 1950's but has never been implemented as far as I know. After having just watched the movie Olympus Has Fallen, the Presidential scenes in G.I. Joe: Retaliation in comparison to that movie were very cartoony.

General Joe Colton - Bruce Willis - from whom the Joes were names after, was not as strong a character as I was expecting. I was really expecting him to take over command of the rest of the Joes when they contacted him. Especially since the Joes were named after him Joe/Willis, I was expecting some kind of possessiveness from Willis about the Joes - as well as a little history about the Joes. Johnson was still basically the leader of the Joes, even with Joe/Willis joining the team. With very few characters from the original movie making an appearance in this one, it would have been nice for Joe/Willis reminiscing about the Joes he has served with. And the friends that Willis supposedly brought in as support to the surviving Joe  team were not seen.

The Cobras were not the super-soldiers from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, but just a military force and was not such a menacing force as you would think. The ninjas were more menacing, and frankly more fun to watch. Cobra Commander was not a major character in the movie either. The movie could have been made without him and would not have changed a thing. I felt the guards where Cobra Commander was being held were too old to be prison guards and made me glad to see what happened to them. The resolution between Snake Eyes/Park and Storm Shadow/Lee is interesting, and I wonder what will happen between them in the next movie.

The movie apparently did so well during it's opening weekend, that the studio has reportedly commissioned a third G.I. Joe movie.

Rated PG-13 for violence. Running time: 110 Minutes.

Click below to watch my favorite trailer of G.I. Joe: Retaliation.


Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.
 

A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD

Twentieth Century Fox

Rated R

Running time: 97 minutes



Click below to watch the A Good Day to Die Hard trailer.



In Twentieth Century Fox's A Good Day to Die Hard, NYPD cop Bruce Willis leaves his home in American and travels to Russia to retrieve his wayward son Jai Courtney from a Moscow prison - and gets involved with Russian terrorist intrigue and the CIA.

In Moscow, high-ranking but corrupt Russian official Sergei Kolesnikov plans on incriminating political prisoner Sebastian Koch without a fair trail when Koch refuses to hand over a secret file believed to have evidence against Kolesnikov. Meanwhile, Courtney - who was arrested for an assasination - agrees to testify against Koch for a shorter sentence. Willis, arriving in Russia for his son arrives at the courthouse - just as Kolesnikov's men attempts their own explosive justice against Koch. Courtney and Koch escape into the streets of Moscow - with Willis and Kolesnikov's men, who are led by Radivoje Bukvic, now after them.

In this fifth installment of the Die Hard movies, this is perhaps the most dramatic Die Hard movie that I have seen, as well as the most dysfunctional family oriented movie in the series. Don't get me wrong - there is still a lot of action in the movie, especially with the car chase and the helicopters. It is a shame that Willis's wife Bonnie Bedelia is not in the movie. I would hope that in the next Die Hard film that Bedelia will be in the movie so that they can have the entire Willis family of Courtney, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Bedelia in a Die Hard film before Willis retires the character. Willis has expressed a desire to do a sixth installment in the franchise and it would be great to see the entire family. My favorite line of dialog in this movie was "the things we do for our kids."

The dysfunctional family dynamics between Willis and Courtney in partnership together, as well as with Koch and his daughter Yuliya Snigir working together were quite interesting - especially when all these characters all interacted with each other. That made these characters much more interesting than bad guy Kolesnikov. Even Kolesnikov's henchman Bukvic was more interesting than Kolesnikov. What happens to Kolesnikov was something out of The Godfather.

There are subtitles when the characters speak Russian, which added to the James Bond-like worldliness feel to the movie. It is interesting to see the evolution of the Die Hard series, from destruction in a claustrophobic building - and going beyond to a world wide scenario with MAD implications. Despite the americanization of taxi cab driver Pasha D. Lychnikoff, Russian security was pretty professional and the use of the military helicopter was intense. It is too bad that you did not see any official Russian response to the situations in the movie, you just saw the terrorist response.

I liked the scenes with the helicopter, the Mi-24 HIND. They actually shot the movie with the HIND firing live ammunition to get the most realistic action. This reminded me of Act of Valor and their live fire use of the Navy SEALs riverine warboats. While the car chase was a great car chase, especially with the Cougar HEV armored truck used by the terrorists, Willis did not care about what he was doing to other people with his cars that seemed very reckless and uncaring to me. What if I was in the cars that he was hitting?

This is the first Die Hard movie that was actually written as a Die Hard movie. The others were actually written as different movies and turned into a Die Hard movie. This is also the first Die Hard film released in the IMAX format.

Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 97 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

 Pancho's Movie Reviews


 

The Expendables 2

Lionsgate

Rated R

Running time: 103 Minutes



Click below to watch The Expendables 2 trailer.



In Lionsgate's The Expendables 2, Sylvester Stallone and his team of mercenary Expendables are sent on a secret mission by CIA operative Bruce Willis to recover the contents of a safe - which holds the key to an abandoned Cold War Soviet Union mine of five tons of weapons grade plutonium.

This is a fun action-packed sequel to the 2010 first movie of The Expendables. The Expendables 2 includes an ensemble of 1980's action stars as well as current action stars which makes for an incredible cast. The Expendables 2 is directed by Simon West and co-written by Stallone and by Richard Wenk, with whom I used to work with. I did not know Richard wrote the movie until I saw the credits on IMDB. However, when watching the movie, I can recognize jokes that are obviously Richard's.

This group of action stars - both old and new - which includes names like Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terry Crews, and Randy Couture look to be having fun on this movie, including newcomers Liam Hemsworth as the next generation Expendable, and Yu Nan (or Nan Yu, I have seen two different postings of her name. Yu Nan is posted on the official website) as a Chinese agent sent by Willis to join their team. It was great that Lundgren's history of chemical engineering was written into his character, making Lundgren perhaps the smartest character of the Expendables. I liked the fact that they played up on Norris's urban legend facts in the movie, as well as playing up Schwarzenegger's character as Stallone's action rival. Charisma Carpenter of Buffy the Vampire Slayer reprises her role as Statham's girlfriend.

Jean-Claude Van Damme was great as the villain. Van Damme is even credited in the movie as Vilain. The final face off battle between Stallone and Van Damme is a great hand to hand battle, worthy to see between the two action stars. Although since they were both basically wearing the same clothes, it was hard to tell the two of them apart when they were battling in silhouette despite their different tattoos and logos. Director West captures the essences of all the other 1980's action films that made these action stars famous.

While I would have liked Van Damme as an Expendable - someone has to be the villain and be strong enough to stand up to the Expendables and Van Damme fits the bill, especially with Van Damme's fighting style. Scott Adkins was sufficiently sadistic as Van Damme's henchman as he executes the various village slave workers. It is a shame that Jet Li left the film early, so you could not really appreciate his character -  although Nan took over the token Asian character aspect of the movie and she does hold her own as an action star, and Statham's knife fighting abilities made up for the missing Li's hand to hand fighting scenes as well as Statham being Stallone's best friend. Liam Hemsworth is not as well known as an action star as his older brother Chris Hemsworth, but Liam made a nice addition as the Expendable's young sniper. I liked that Terry Crews was the cook of the movie, but I do not remember much of Randy Couture, even though he was supposed to be the glue that holds the dysfunctional Expendables together. Watching all the 80's action stars firing off the big guns was a lot of fun. The shootout at the airport reminded me of a video game my nephew was playing with recently.

Having a village full of mothers such as Amanda Ooms defending their children from the Expendables and Van Damme's men was both comedic and heartbreaking and added some humanity to the story. There is a great bit with a Smart Car which is especially funny to me as we have a fleet of Smart Cars at work for promotional appearances for our company and to see a Smart Car being used in the movie was great.

Rated R for graphic violence. Running time: 103 Minutes.

Click below to watch a Top Five list of Action films to prepare you for The Expendables 2 movie.



Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

Pancho's Movie Reviews

Red

Summit Entertainment
and DC Entertainment

Rated PG-13

Running time: 111 minutes



Click below to watch the Red trailer.


Lonely suburbanite Bruce Willis is wooing his government case worker agent Mary-Louise Parker for his government checks. Soon - a professional hit squad tries to kill Willis in his home. Willis is a former CIA agent who has been declared RED - Retired, Extremely Dangerous. Now Willis must gather his fellow RED agents, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren to break into CIA Headquarters to find out who is trying to kill all of them, as well as his girlfriend Parker - who reluctantly gets caught up in the middle of all this mess.

Based on the graphic novel Red, DC Entertainment's Red is a much lighter and more comedic version of the graphic novel from what I hear, although I have not read the graphic novel yet. The mature cast seems to be having a lot of fun in the movie. To see Willis as a tough CIA agent developing a relationship with the young Parker and finally letting someone into his secret agent life is rather touching. Having The Queen of drama, Oscar winner Helen Mirren - wearing an evening gown and firing a machine gun - in an action film was one of the reasons why I wanted to see this movie in the first place and Mirren does not disappoint. As Mirren tells Parker, "I kill people, dear." Even if Mirren does kill people, Mirren is still very much a lady. Malkovich is over the top playing an agent who was given LSD for 11 years. Freeman is not given as much to do in the movie, but he does have his moments.

Rated PG-13 for violence. Running time 111 minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.