Running Time: 2 Hours
MPAA Rating: PG-13
“G.I. Joe” is based on the cartoon of the same title that evolved from the classic military action figure of the 1960’s. The name is no longer that of an individual soldier, but of an elite military squadron similar to America’s Delta Force. It takes the “best of the best” soldiers from various military factions and uses them in the world’s most critical missions. Their assignment in this film is to safely transport weaponized nanobots which, of course, quickly goes awry when enemy schemes unfold.
Not much can be said about the quality of this movie. It very closely follows the path of its predecessors, the Transformers movies, and panders to a base audience whim: explosions and one-liners with little to no story arc. I could understand if somebody didn’t regret paying money to see it. After all, the movie stays consistent by waiting no more than 90 seconds to blow up something new. However, the type of person who would actually said this movie was “good” probably wouldn’t sit through Citizen Kane if you paid them to. There are far too many clichés in the film to list here. At one point in the movie, encouraged by the fact that I had seen many of the situations in previous action flicks, I was compelled to predict every detail of what happened before it occurred. I was correct in every case.
The basic theme of the movie is “oh, look how awesome the military is!” which is to be expected, I suppose, considering that that has been the point of G.I. Joe since its origin. There is only one other, very subtle message that I noticed toward the beginning of the film. That is when, in one short line, the man who is selling the nanobots missiles to government officials states that the machines were developed on the premise that they would be used to cure cancer. He then demonstrates how great they are at destroying things and the corruption and militarization of science meant to be used for the good of mankind is never mentioned again.
The characters are as lifeless as the plastic figures they are representing. The black soldier gives somewhat stereotypical comic-relief and anybody with an accent is a bad guy. Many characters constantly show themselves to be entirely incompetent, so it is beyond me how they make it into the military’s Ivy League squad. For soldiers who are trained to protect civilians, they sure do a bad job of it. In a scene where the team attempts to protect a national monument, I lost count of how many civilians would most likely have died because of their tactics. Even with the scores of gruesome deaths in the film, the only person who is truly apologetic in the end is the casting director.
For being subtitled “Rise of the Cobra”, the two minutes spent explaining the Cobra Commander’s origin story seems very unfulfilling. The movie is what many people have assumed that it is: a fun way to waste two hours of your life. In the end, nobody is changed, nothing is learned, and some lucky pyrotechnician has brought home the paycheck of a lifetime. G.I. Joe sums itself up rather accurately in its choice of end credits music (“Boom Boom Pow” by The Black Eyed Peas): this is for people who want to stop thinking for a while, and just enjoy the flash.
Actual Rating: This is an extremely violent movie. Dozens of unnamed soldiers and civilians die onscreen, women are brutally killed, children bloody each other up and one 10 year old murders an old man with a sword. To top all of that off, the director seems to have a fetish for people being stabbed through their eye. While the movie is obviously aimed at kids and young teens, the content is definitely not suitable for younger viewers. The amount of graphic, unpunished death most egregiously earns this movie an “R” rating. However, thanks to modern day standards, no movie gets that kind of rating unless it does something REALLY bad (like saying a naughty word or showing a nipple).
I’ll be making a case for my views on the hierarchy of “offensive material” in opposition to the MPAA’s in an essay that I will post on this blog.
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