‘G.I.’ So-So

It’s definitely not the biggest flop of Summer 2009. That honor is still reserved for Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen (artistically) and either Year One or Land of the Lost (financially). And there really was no reason to avoid screening the film for the press. Sure, a few long time curmudgeons would and still will hate on this title, but it clearly wasn’t made for them. Besides, the intended audience, who doesn’t read such cinematic snobbery in the first place, won’t be clamoring for their thoughts any time soon. No, if G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra becomes any kind of hit for studio parent Paramount, it won’t be because of some specialized publicity, a pick-and-choose concept of criticism, or geek nation rebelling against the mainstream media. It will be because, like it or not, Stephen Sommers has made a pretty decent popcorn film – flawed, but fun.

Jarhead grunt Duke and his army buddy Ripcord are put in charge of delivering some sensitive nanotech warheads for the U.S. government. While on route, their convoy is ambushed by a group of elite fighting drones led by the lethal Baroness. They destroy most of Duke’s men before another secret squadron, known as the G.I. Joes, saves the day. Under the directive of General Hawk, this collective of specialized forces has the latest in scientific and high tech weaponry advances. Unfortunately, the Baroness’ efforts are bankrolled by aggressive arms dealer McCullem, who along with a mad scientist known as “The Doctor” are creating a race of super soldiers. The nanotech warheads will be used to blackmail the rest of the world into falling in line with the evildoers’ demands. It will be up to the Joes to find the foe’s hidden hideout, retrieve the bombs, and once again make the world a safe for freedom and justice.

If all you care about is action, G.I. Joe delivers. It offers up some of the best eye candy stunt set-pieces of the summer, easily besting the Bay bombast of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. While he’s just as crazed and over the top as his brother in non-believability, director Sommers at least stages his chaos with a normal attention span in mind. During a terrific chase scene in Paris, the camera leaps and bounds around the F/X, allowing us to both feel the experience and follow it, logistically. Similarly, a last act dogfight underwater (don’t ask) provides enough big screen scope and CG pyrotechnics to keep many a 14 year old’s bubbling brain pan good and stimulated. Even the hand-to-hand combat between our two franchise ninjas – Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes – is a crackerjack karate kick.

But if all you care about is character, narrative logic, emotional depth – Heck, even something you’ll remember an hour after you’ve seen it – G.I. Joe completely fails. This is a film that simply tosses personalities at the screen, unexplained and completely without context, coming back later for a few flaccid flashbacks in order to rebuild their already meaningless backstory. We know very little about Duke, even less about Ripcord, and the rest of the “Joes” are jerryrigged out of central casting conceits, multicultural needs, and a clear eye toward the budgetary bottom line. Don’t come looking for A-list stars here. Dennis Quiad aside (he’s our real American heroes aging father figure), the rest of the company is crap.

Indeed, the actor choices here are laughably bad. Sienna Miller does a decent job mimicking a Matrix-like female bad-ass (complete with a Trinity-lite line of tight black leather outfits), but she’s hormone fodder, nothing more. Marlon Wayans might have been added for marketing diversity’s sake, but his comic asides are just awful. As for our villains, there’s not much to discuss. Both Christopher Eccleston and Joseph Gordon-Levitt may seem like unusual choices to play Cobra’s kings, but they spend so much time doing little except explaining themselves that we grow weary of the endless exposition. But the worst marquee offender here is Channing Tatum. Totally talentless, without a lick of onscreen magnetism or presence, he represents the most low rent hero in the history of action films since the days of Steven Seagal. Had Sommers picked a better group of cinematic recruits, G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra would be much, much better. With the current crop, he needs all the supercomputing power the production can muster.

And then there is the script, a slop jar collection of cartoon call-backs, contemporary tech buzzwords, jingoistic clichés, and every emotionless bon mot in the thriller love interest primer. We don’t expect to buy or believe everything here – this is a property based on a kid’s show fashioned out of some updated toys, after all – but it would be nice to have something resembling human interaction and warmth between the characters. Everything is declarative and assertive, from military directives to feelings of affection. Perhaps the problem goes back once again to casting, but it seems pretty clear that not even a director with a better grip on people than Sommers could elicit feelings out of the fake, pedantic dialogue offered as conversations here.

With a plethora of whiz bang pop rock and roll to provide the demo with some entertainment rules of engagement and just enough story to keep things from straying too far off course, G. I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra will be seen as the one time the studio rolled the dice and more or less came up a winner. Even if the movie doesn’t make back all it’s money, Paramount successfully avoided the predicted piling-on of an out of touch media in favor of finding publicity accomplices within the Internet’s new specialized salesmen. Whether it will really mean anything in the end remains to be seen. After all, it’s not all about the press. It’s also about the presentation – and this escapist claptrap is goofy and cheesy, but mostly mediocre. And if a group of racists robots can monopolize this Summer’s money pit with their overlong trip into tedium, these celebrated soldiers should easily recapture some of final fiscal glory. They’re not heroes, or zeroes. Instead, these G.I.s are just so-so.