GI JOE : The Rise of Cobra, 2009
Movie Review

An elite military unit comprised of special operatives known as G.I. Joe, operating out of The Pit, takes on an evil organization led by a notorious arms dealer.

REVIEW:

This film is a complete head scratcher. You wonder what everyone was thinking because this is just an insulting film to the intelligence of anyone. In the first 40 minutes while bad dialogue, cliche 80s esque storylines and amateur action sequences was thrown around on screen I thought that this just isn't a film for people over the age of 22. Then I changed my mind because even 10 year old must know that people don't talk this way. And if you belong to an organization of the most elite soldiers of the entire world, then you are smart and experienced enough even at the age of 5 to question why these people are so ordinary. In fact I just checked the dictionary before writing this review and when looking up the word ordinary it said to see the characters from the 2009 GI JOE movie.

I don't want to sound cruel because I know that making a film like this is an extremely difficult task. And it takes a team of 100s over a year of their lives to make it. But I wonder what those people are really thinking if you strap them to a lie-detector test and ask them if they are proud of GI JOE. Films are tough to make so I appreciate all of the hard work they put into it, but you can't feel that sorry for them because they did screw the thing up themselves and there was such an easy solution to actually turn GI JOE into a good film. To actually hire a professional screenwriter who understands how to blend a plot, character development, dialogue that suits the tone of the film plus is entertaining to hear and an actual theme (point to the film) into the scenes.

The people who wrote this screenplay should not be blamed because I think this is a solid first draft of a story, but there are usually at least 20 more drafts to go. It's the producers of Paramount Pictures and the director who should be ashamed of themselves for actually green-lighting a story that triggers no emotional feeling to the audience. We sat in the cinema and watched a bunch of action scenes and non-original ones at that. Even action scenes have to have a point to them and if they involve characters that you begin to care for then it's that much better. But GI JOE gives us no reason or desire to care for any of the characters in the film and therefore the action in the film is just a been there seen that experience.

And all they had to do was take 10 million out of the 180 million budget and call up Tony Gilroy and ask him to do a Bourne-esque rewrite on the script. And Gilroy would of turned this film into gold. Box office gold but also the almighty gold of respectability. And respect in Hollywood seems to domino on top of every single cast and crew member who worked on the film. And a solid screenplay written by a solid writer helps the careers of all the young talent who worked on GI JOE and gives them a giant career boost. So the question is why didn't they do this?

The answer could be as simple as EGO. The producers thought the script was fine and didn't want to spend too much money on those writers. I think there is a sniff of a really good story in GI JOE. I thought the idea of doing origin story flashbacks while the present day story occured was an interesting idea. And the stories of Cobra Commander and Destro are very intriguing. But ideas are a dime a dozen and it's only the execution that counts. And it just makes you sadder too because you know there could of been a good movie in all of this mess of a film.

And I'm curious why films like this are taking too long to end. The running time of GI JOE is 2 hours and 15 minutes. What's with the epic length in these type of movies? What happened to the time when a 2 hour movie was considered really long and 1:45 was usually the limit? This was only 5 years ago but ever since The Dark Knight decided to give us a 2:30 running time, every other producer wants to do the same thing. And when it's a bad film those 135 minutes go really, really slow.

So in this reviewers opinion please do not go see this film and save your money. It kills brain cells.

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