G.I. Joe ROC: User reviews!

[lou2099]

and calling DQ good is questionable at best.

Well, Randy has always been the better actor.

 

[Superfreak]

Well, Randy has always been the better actor.

better than those in this movie, most certainly. But my love goes no further. He's a 3rd rate actor, maybe 4th IMO. I don't know how he still gets work.

 

[mr. peasant]

But here's the rub, it SHOULD have been a movie with better acting. The only truly good actor in this movie was Dennis Quaid, and he was MIA for the whole second act of the movie.

Actually, I think it shouldn't need to be a movie with top class acting. This is not an Oscar bait movie, nor did it set out to be. It's an adaptation of an over-the-top, cheesy and cartoony toyline that at no point ever remotely grounded in reality or how the military actually functioned. When your source material includes things like a Weather Dominator, a monocled, handlebar-moustached mad scientist who runs around barechested and commandos dressed like the Village People, all of whom are armed with at least one portable rocket launcher, seriousness is pretty much nonexistent. Hence, the actors and actresses are supposed to ham it up and be larger-than-life caricatures of their respective stereotypes. And to that end, the movie succeeded spectacularly.

 

[cryptic name]

But here's the rub, it SHOULD have been a movie with better acting. The only truly good actor in this movie was Dennis Quaid, and he was MIA for the whole second act of the movie.

Jospeh Gordon Levit brought it. and Sienna Miller, though i'm sure it wasn't the most difficult performance, fully brought her character to life. hell, even Ray Park was great for having no face and no dialogue.

 

[Matt.S99]

Jospeh Gordon Levit brought it. and Sienna Miller, though i'm sure it wasn't the most difficult performance, fully brought her character to life. hell, even Ray Park was great for having no face and no dialogue.

QFT.

I didnt think any were terrible. No, not even Tatum. He wasnt grea,t but Ive seen worse. And some people were saying Quaid was really bad and honesty, I odnt see it.

 

[lou2099]

Jospeh Gordon Levit brought it. and Sienna Miller, though i'm sure it wasn't the most difficult performance, fully brought her character to life.

only when she was evil Baroness.

hell, even Ray Park was great for having no face and no dialogue.

I'll agree to those three somewhat, but they were hardly high drama performances. A movie star's performance is only as good as your editor and director sees it.

Have you guys ever heard of the movie, Network? Well, although Faye Dunaway won a Best Actress Oscar for it, every one of her dramatic scenes were hand picked by Sidney Lumet and the editor. Her acting was so horrible that Lumet had her do several dozen takes for each scene.

 

[CelticPredator]

Qauid was godawful. Even though I read the script, I still was hoping his character would die. He was just too over the top. Whats wrong with his normal voice?? He didnt need to speak that wayl.

 

[Primal Slayer]

It was an ok movie, I enjoyed it for the most part. Acting was ok, Channing couldve been a bit better. The Scarlet charecter could have been better, for someone who never lost a fight she sure was getting her butt beat everytime she went up against the enemy.

 

[Theweepeople]

After such an amazing opening weekend for GI Joe Stephen Sommers apparently believes critics hate his movies because they're popular and successful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9B6...-popular-and-successf&feature=player_embedded

 

[blksuperman2]

How are those bad reasons to hate the movie? They're perfectly legitimate. In fact you listing them one after the other is a great way to prove that the movie sucked.

Also, the word "there" is a way to point out a location of something. The word you're looking for is "they're".

Let's review class!

Their = possessive!
They're = contraction of "they are"!
There = adverb used to indicate the place of something!

OK? Hand in your papers at the end of class.

LOL, you typed exactly what I was thinking. Or you my twin-brother?

 

[CelticPredator]

Thanks mods! Seriously.

 

[LostSon88]

I just saw it. I FREAKIN' LOVED IT! Obviously went in apprehensive what with everyone telling me how bad it was but I seriously think now that a lot of people were overexaggerating.

Sure there were maybe 1 or 2 cringe worthy moments but on the whole I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and can't wait for the sequel.

A solid 8/10.

 

[Shadow-Guardian]

OK, I just got back from the movie about 4 hours ago. So here is my offical review.

To start simply: I F***ING LOVED THIS MOVIE. It was so great. I loved every seconds of it. All the actors played their characters perfectly.

Duke was awesome (acting was a little eh but I still liked him).

Ripcord was great and provided good comedy, without going overboard.

Storm Shadow was played PERFECTLY by Byun Hung Lee (or whatever his name is), I esspecially like the flashback scenes.

Heavy Duty was played very well by...Triple A.

Chris E played Destro absolutely perfectly, I loved him as Destro, and he made a great villain.

Rachel Nichols and Seianna Miller played their characters to absolute perfection, They kicked all kinds of ass and took names.

And of course, Snake Eyes was the best. Ray Park did an exellent job. He did great acting coming from a guy no never speaks and his face is completely covered.

Now onto my favorite character in the whole movie: THE DOCTOR. Seriously, this guy kicked so much ass, I almost cheered in the theater. From the first pic of him, I was very on the fence about it. But the more and more I saw of him, the more I warmed up to it. He was the best part of the whole movie. And I loved his look. The mouthmask, the eye thing, the coat, and esspecially the voice. I don't know who did that voice, might have been JGL, but I thought it was just perfect. Shame there wasn't more from him. I thought the flashbacks of him provided a great story, and really made you feel for him. JGL's acting was just fricking awesome. He did an absolutely amazing job on the character. His eye movements, the way he moves, was all just perfect.

And for the grand finale: COBRA COMMANDER. Personally, I thought he was AMAZING. Seriosuly, his voice, mask, and everytihng else was just amazing. I loved him. Eveyone thinks his mask is dumb, but I thought it was great, and really fit the character imo. It's like a mix between the hood and helmet, it's got the evil cold eyes of the hood, and the silver battle face mask of the helmet. I got chills when he said "You will call me...[/b]COMMANDER[/b]. And I also noticed the CObra symbol on the ship. Great touch. I really would love to see more of CC.

Now into the story and action and all that. It really didn't have that great of a story, but G.I. Joe never really had one to begin with. It was mostly just "Here are the good guys, here are they bad guys. Now watch them blow each other up."

Now onto the action: MY GOD this movie was frickin INTENSE. It never slowed down, and it was just a blast to watch. From the first action scene (where Duke gets ambushed) to the final artic assualt, it was a comeplete thrill ride. The paris pursuit chase scene was incredible. The Accelerator suits were AWESOME. I really hope we see more of them in the sequel.

Overall, I give this movie a 10/10 for the the entertainment value. DOn't go into this epecting The Dark Knight, and you'll have a blast. And I absolutely cannot wait for the Sequel. This movie, and the ending esspecially, left me wanting more. And wih Cobra now officially formed, the s*** is definitly gonna hit the fan in the next one. I loved this movie, and can't wait for more.

Oh, and the Neo-Vipers were awesome.

 

[strikezone89]

am i the only one who loved the "doctor" character? i thought he was very creepy and made the movie interesting

 

[CelticPredator]

"Every Seconds of it."

Heh....

 

[Timstuff]

I thought The Doctor rocked. He was probably one of the best characters in the whole movie.

 

[Darkness Falls]

the doctor was badass

 

[Shadow-Guardian]

Sorry, typo. Was typing fast.

 

[Episode29]

Remember those Hasbro G.I. Joe toy commercials from the mid-eighties? The ones with that hyper-active kid laying by a small, perfectly constructed, picture-esque stream, surrounded by a small fortune’s worth of 3¾ inch plastic characters and massive, ungainly, missile-firing vehicles, ecstatically spouting out combat noises (“KCH-POO!” “UH-UH-UH-UH-UHHH!”, “CCCHHHH-KUH!&#8221 and smashing his beloved possessions through piles of small, see-through blocks? I know I sure do and, based on the evidence at hand in G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra, director Stephen Sommers sure does too, for he has crafted nothing if not the dopiest and most extravagant action-figure advertisement of all time. And I mean that in perhaps the best way possible.

Unlike Michael Bay’s bloated and insincere Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a tonal mess, which attempted to approximate adolescent giddiness through misogyny, mean-spirited violence and potty humour, Sommers' film is goofily earnest to a fault, illustrating an epic tale of good vs. evil with all the verve and intellect of a 10-year-old male subsisting on an endless nutrition-free diet of video-games, Saturday morning cartoons and James Bond and Star Wars movies. It’s the type of flick where Dennis Quaid can gruffly shout “release the sharks”, free of pesky irony or self-awareness, and clashing opposite-coloured ninjas icily refer to each other as “brother” (All the characters in G.I. Joe share freakishly coincidental interconnecting back stories, covered in countless cheesy flashbacks which open and close with characters staring dramatically into space, which seem to imply that the screenwriters are huge fans of Paul Haggis’ Crash). Did I mention there’s also a robotic tracking device disguised as a fish? Or a jet which only responds to voice commands? In Gaelic? Well, there is, dammit, and although the film they’re haphazardly stuffed into isn’t any good by accepted critical standards, there is an almost admirable purity to be found in its aw-shucks, blow-em-all-up idiocy. G.I. Joe may be crappy and campy, but it’s also an almost pitch-perfect translation of the absurd, one-dimensional property which spawned it.

Rise of the Cobra’s story can be summed up in a single sentence: the good guys have to stop experimental metal-consuming nano-tech missiles from falling into the hands of bad guys, who would use them to take over the world. How or why is not important. What is of central concern, though, is that the main good guys are Duke and Ripcord (Every character in this film has apparently eschewed traditional Christian names in favour of bad-ass monikers.), played by a wooden Channing Tatum and, um, Marlon Wayans. They’re a couple of top-shelf army rangers who blunder and worm their way – rather easily, it must be said – into being recruited into the G.I. Joe task-force, an internationally made-up team of super soldiers operating from a secret subterranean base in the deserts of Egypt. Overseen by the crusty old warhorse General Hawk (Dennis Quaid), the team also features the silent ninja warrior Snake-Eyes (Ray Park), the British arms expert Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), communications genius Breaker (Said Taghmaoui) and the impressively pneumatic Scarlett (Rachel Nichols – doing her noble part to help single-handedly launch a new generation of young boys into the throws of puberty).

Despite being the new guys on the team, Duke and Ripcord are almost immediately thrust into leader-ship type roles, tasked with preventing the all-important WMDs from falling into the hands of the seductive, dominatrix-lite Baroness (Sienna Miller – wearing regalia that suggests that Victoria’s Secret may in fact have a separate catalogue for evil mercenaries), master-of-disguise Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) and the evil ninja Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee). They, in turn, are working for the slimy Scottish arms merchant McCullen (Christopher Eccleston – acting through an accent which makes Mel Gibson’s Braveheart brogue feel restrained), who is so uncompromisingly evil that he also employs a sinister deformed scientist named, simply, The Doctor (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who has created an army of nano-injected, brain-washed mega-storm troopers. As these colourful baddies repeatedly clash with the no-nonsense Joes, by land, sea and air, for the fate of the free world, we are treated, in place of a story, to a continuous demonstration of the best computer-generated effects possibly imagined circa 1997 (this includes a cameo by a first-gen Coca-Cola™ polar bear). Certainly CGI Joe: There Will Be Explosions would have been a more apt title.

In spite of the often gaudily unfinished effects work, exemplified best by the expansive exterior shots, such as the sandy landscape outside the Joe’s base and the underwater sprawl of the villains’ headquarters, which resemble the shiny, polygon-rendered environments of a Turok: Dinosaur Hunter game level, the film’s action sequences still manage to build up a suitably enjoyable intensity. There is a chase through the streets of Paris featuring Duke and Ripcord, wearing Halo-like “accelerator suits”, and accompanied by a nimble Snake-Eyes and motorbike-jumping Scarlett, tearing after a multi-weapon-firing truck, that is impressive for both its scale and the stunning amount of collateral damage it accumulates. Later, Sommers’ rips a page from George Lucas’ Return of the Jedi playbook, with a ludicrous three-pronged assault on McCullen’s underwater base - which is seemingly still under construction considering the ever-present blow-torch wielding workman looming in the background of almost every interior shot - that includes two warring fleets of attack-submersibles (I have no idea how the Joe’s transported their forces to the Arctic – where ice sinks, apparently - so speedily), violent gun battles and a sword-slashing ninja mêlée. It’s goofy and unnecessarily violent stuff to be sure, but it’ll play like gang-busters to youngsters and those able to regress in maturity level for 120 minutes.

To Sommers’ credit, all of his actors are almost all on-board with his cheesy vision, cranking up the lunacy of their performances to 11 and beyond. Quaid winces and frowns with aplomb (possibly reliving the traumatic experience of signing his three-picture contract), Sienna Miller vamps it up like a Hell’s Angels vixen and a gloriously flamboyant Joseph Gordon-Levitt croaks and guffaws through a death-metal growl. Rachel Nichols, whose Scarlett is the latest graduate from the Denise Richards University of Dubious Intelligence, spouts her inane pseudo-scientific dialogue with bubble-headed pep and jogs in a sports bra like nobody’s business. In arguably the film’s ultimate scene of coo-coo for Cocoapuffs logic, Nichols and Said Taghmaoui stick large electrical spikes into a dead bad-guy’s head in order to download his memories and make photographs from them. Yes. They then, using a picture of a shadow as a reference point, pin-point the location of his headquarters through “spherical trigonometry”. I felt like hugging someone when those precious two words were uttered.

When it’s all said and done, and the titular cobra has indeed risen (though, surprisingly, neither Nichols or Miller have any bearing on this occurrence), and left the door gaping wide-open for the inevitable sequel, it’s hard not to feel a pang of desire for whatever stupid juvenile delights Sommers’ has left up his fromage-scented sleeve. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is as synthetic as movie theatre pop-corn and as dumb as a Dolph Lundgren film festival. However, for sugar-addled kids or those seeking to relive the endearingly bald-faced tackiness of the original cartoon show, or, more likely, derive sardonic amusement from it, G.I. Joe is just the ticket for you. Sometimes, it`s nice to know that, just when blockbuster action movies couldn`t get any sillier, G.I. Joe is there. Yo, Joe!

*snicker*.

3 out of 5

 

[Episode29]

Curse ye SHH, and your double-posting ways.

 

[Superfreak]

Qauid was godawful. Even though I read the script, I still was hoping his character would die. He was just too over the top. Whats wrong with his normal voice?? He didnt need to speak that wayl.

I know right, like that's the primary problem with Quaid. That 'Voice' ruined The Alamo, not to mention Dragonheart, and was a contributing factor in the idiocy of this movie. I don't understand why he doesn't use his normal voice either

 

[BlackLantern]

I liked Quaid

 

[roach]

I can almost guarantee that Storm shadow will be back, watching the original series Storm shadow "died" a couple of times

 

[BlackLantern]

Storm Shadow = Wile E. Coyote

 

[CelticPredator]

Eppy, I actually agree with your review. It was exacly like playing with toys. It really brought me back to when I was little...er...even though I never had Joes... I did create long story lines, with ships, bases, and final battles.

I dont know why Sommers gets so much hate. He isnt like Bay at all. He's not a dick, he doesnt get mad at fans (not that Bay's anger isnt justifyed)....and he isnt a bad director.

But he's not a good one, aside from The Mummy, and Deep Rising, he really cant get a good proformance out of an actor.