G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) - Movie Review

Not sure how I feel about G.I. Joe: Retaliation. I have some mixed feelings. When I think about watching the cartoon of G.I. Joe as a kid there were never any casualties. I know expecting that in a live action movie like this one is asking too much, but one of the main characters, Duke (Channing Tatum), is killed in the first 20 minutes or so.

I do have to say that the special effects are pretty good in this movie, not up to par compared to the first movie, but acceptable. The firefly explosives are interesting, the nanomites are present still (at least as far as Zartan is concerned), and some of the weapons are pretty cool. But over all, it felt like everything was scaled back somewhat.

All of that being said, there are still some pretty cool scenes that I liked very much.

The first scene I liked is the scene where Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Jinx (Elodie Yung) travel to a mountainous retreat to retrieve Stormshadow (Byung-hun Lee) to answer for his crime of killing his Master when he was still a child. A lot of the fighting that Jinx and Snake Eyes have to do are done on repelling ropes. The scene ends, or at least continues, when Stormshadow is brought before the Blind Master (RZA) and it is revealed that Stormshadow did not kill his Master... I won't reveal who did, you'll have to watch the movie.

Another scene I liked was when Jaye (Adrianne Palicki) and General Joe Colton (Bruce Willis) are sent to rescue the President (Jonathan Pryce). Colton laying down in the El Camino bed and popping open the tailgate while firing his machine gun taking out the guards was pretty cool. However, Jaye did something she probably shouldn't have done. Again, watch the movie to see what she did.

Another scene I liked was where Stormshadow avenged his Master. But I won't tell you who it was he killed. I also won't tell you what he did to avenge his Master.

I didn't like the fact that Ripcord, Scarlett, The Baroness, General Hawk, Heavy Duty and Breaker are not in this movie. I don't like that Duke is killed. Nor do I like that Destro is left in prison by Cobra Commander. But I am not meant to. I don't remember Firefly (Ray Stevenson), but he was pretty cool in the movie, at least his firefly explosives were cool. It was interesting to see the ninja society that Snake Eyes belongs to and their dealings with Stormshadow. No offense to the male characters that didn't come back, but replacing Scarlett (Rachel Nichols) with Jaye is at least an even trade. Replacing Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) with Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), technically not a replacement but..., I wondered why Roadblock wasn't in the first movie.

After all of that, I give this movie 6 stars out of 10.