Edmund's Movie Rants

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

I will try not to reveal too much about this movie as much as possible. For an action movie Rise of Cobra does not disappoint; however the acting is much to be desired. Then again, what's new when it comes to action movies. Your main characters: Ripcord (Marlon Wayans), Duke (ChanningTatum), The Baroness (Sienna Miller), Snake Eyes (Ray Park), Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), and Storm Shadow (Lee Beeyong-heon).

The basic plot of the movie is to prevent the annihilation of the world by techno WMD's. Channing Tatum's "acting" is very hard to watch and quite honestly almost ruined this movie for me. He is not convincing as a no holds barred tactical soldier, however his cast mates manage to save him. Tatum plays Duke, a Special-Ops soldier who along with Ripcord (Wayans) has been assigned to safeguard neo-tech weapons. After being ambushed they are then recruited by General Hawk (Dennis Quaid) to be part of a highly specialized covert international team to recover the weapons. Not surprisingly, the movie is chock full of action sequences that do not disappoint nor dominate to the point that you feel like the entire film is just one long action sequence. Throughout the film are flashbacks a la Lost that indicate how the characters in the film became the Heroes and Villains they are today. Thankfully the flashbacks are not a distraction and actually correlate to the storyline quite well.

Sienna Miller as The Baroness-and Ana-does a good job and is one of two characters that I enjoyed more than others (Snake Eyes is the other character). Her character is strong and kicks ass consistently throughout the film until all of a sudden the obligatory damsel in distress nonsense is injected and makes your stomach churn. Her fight scene with Scarlett (Nichols) is enough to make you forget-not forgive-the ridiculous departure from her strength. I suppose it is meant to demonstrate her digress to Ana, but it is not done seamlessly; annoying but not detrimental.

Portions of the film come off as made for T.V., especially when the flashback of how Cobra came to be was shown. I personally feel more could have been put into this given the title of the film is The Rise of Cobra. Albeit the misses, the hits are enough to make G.I. Joe a fun movie for a Friday/Saturday night.

I give The Rise of Cobra a modified Spend that doe:Full price the joint! but take your own refreshments rating.

Happy watching. Edmund

Edmund's Movie Rants Ratings: Don't Bother, DVD That Beast, Spend that doe: Full price the joint!