G.I. Joe : Conspiration

As a film buff, I love seeing films alone on Saturday afternoons or Friday nights. As as result of my frequent attendance, I have come to know not to expect much from action blockbuster films. Yes, you get your usual incomprehensible hand-to-hand fights, buildings exploding and enemy gunfire as inaccurate as ever, with the inevitably minimal plot and screenplay. As the ending credits rolled, I stood up thinking "ehhh". The film definitely had some amazingly entertaining action sequences and awesome special effects, but you know, you can't really be THAT amazed with an action film. Not gonna lie, the screenplay in this film was pretty well written, and it included quite a few pleasantly surprising laughs. Dwayne Johnson has a big few months ahead of him with the release of Snitch (which I give a 7/10), the next Fast and Furious movie, and Pain & Gain. With this film, he did reinforce his true acting credentials, even though not much notable acting is observed in such a genre. All in all, if you're expecting something like Olympus Has Fallen, you might be dissatisfied. If you go in like me, with no true expectations other than hoping for some entertainment, you might like what you see.

This sequel may have a few flaws like most sequels, but G.I. Joe: Retaliation is much more charismatic and an improvement upon its predecessor.

The sequel to the first G.I.Joe movie gathered some negative reviews like its predecessor. This kind of thing doesn't deter me from watching any movie and one of the reasons is because you have to understand what kind of movie you're going to watch. I know that this is a mindless action flick with a simple plot. It's entertaining and it doesn't have to prove a point by being a perfectly constructed movie. It's meant to look cool and lack any real depth. After getting that out of my system, I can say that I enjoyed watching Retaliation and will try to watch it many times in the future, as this is the kind of film I watch when I wanna have fun. Ranging from The Rock to Willis this movie has very stylistic characters that ultimately kick ass with the Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow battles coming to mind. The special effects also look impressive, particularly in one massive destruction scene. If you like to just lay back and see great fights and a little eye candy then this is the movie for you. Anyone trying to be logic about this I'll just tell you that you are wasting your time.

Rating 8/10

First of all, I am so happy to see The Rock and Bruce Willis joining the cast, the movie suddenly looks so huge with them. But I still hate how they trimmed almost all of the original cast, I like Ana and Scarlett, and it definitely will be more amusing if Ripcord is in this sequel. Luckily they kept Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, they are just as awesome as they were in the previous film, really enjoy the rival show of these two character.

The story line is average, the plot is weird, doesn't have ups and downs, only a parallel line from beginning to the end. There is no climax in G.I Joe: Retaliation, but if you say the movie is excited at all time, it would be hard to argue.

There are not much advanced and cool weapon stuffs in this sequel, probably to fit the story, I'd say it is actually kinda boring compare to the previous G.I. Joe movie. However, some of the scene is pretty entertained tho.

Overall, with good actors and good special effect, G.I. Joe: Retaliation only needs a better screenplay to be a better movie.

¨Call me JOE¨

As a kid I was a huge fan of the GI Joe cartoons and had a vast collection of the action figures, but I never thought it was a very good idea to bring the franchise to the big screen. I didn't like the first film despite all the great special effects because the entire concept was just way too silly, and I didn't like this film all that much either despite the fact it had a better story and some more interesting characters. What really saved this film for me was a ten minute action scene in the mountains which was pretty amazing and made the entire movie worthwhile. It was one of the best action scenes I've seen all year. This second film was directed by Jon M. Chu (Justin Bieber Never Say Never and Step Up 2) and the screenplay co-written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Zombieland), but very few actors are back from the original movie (only five) so this felt like a totally different movie. Retaliation is much better than Rise of Cobra but it still felt a little light due to the nonstop action. It's one of those movies you can enjoy for two hours but forget about once it's over. What it does have going for it is that is includes better action stars like The Rock and Bruce Willis. The Rock is probably one of the best contemporary action stars and he already brought the Fast and Furious franchise back alive again. He doesn't quite do the same with GI Joe, but he still makes this movie a little more enjoyable than the original one. Despite all the cheesiness of the plot I still had some fun, and the producers knew that the premise couldn't be taken seriously so they just played around with it.

The Joes continue to serve and protect the world under the leadership of Captain Duke (Channing Tatum) and his team which consists of Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock), Flint (D.J. Cotrona), and Jaye (Adrianne Palicki). They have a couple of successful missions until the team is betrayed by the US president (Jonathan Pryce) who is actually Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) infiltrated as him. Thus the Joes are forced to fight enemy forces inside their own government and are forced to receive help from the only person they can trust: retired General Joe Colton (Bruce Willis). Meanwhile Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) has conceived a plan with Firefly (Ray Stevenson) to free their imprisoned Cobra Commander (Luke Bracey). Snake Eyes (Ray Park) is determined to stop him with the help of Jinx (Elodie Yung), but the Joes are running out of time with the President threatening the world with a nuclear war. Will the Joes be able to stop the Cobra team before they destroy the entire world?

Channing Tatum and The Rock shared some funny scenes together and had great chemistry, but I would have enjoyed more screen time with them. Adrianne Palicki looked great in that red dress and was a good addition to the film. Cotrona and Willis didn't do much, but the highlight of the film was the mountain action sequence between Park and Lee. The film had its extremely cheesy moments, and I couldn't believe they even didn't care about the explosion of London. They continued as if nothing ever happened and celebrated the success of the mission without considering the devastating loss. I think that was probably the worst part of the film and the entire scene was probably used to attract people through the trailers. Retaliation is big and loud, anticipation for what is to come in the blockbuster summer movies. By the time summer gets here we will probably have forgotten all about this movie, but it was still a fun and entertaining two hours. Even those people that will end up hating this film will have to agree that the ten minute action scene between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow was pretty entertaining. As long as you don't think too much about what's going on you might enjoy this senseless film.