Movie Review GI Joe: Retaliation

 WATCH THE TRAILER IN THE LINK BELOW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwS3jafO_9s

If you enjoyed the first GI JOE movie and are more than ready to give Retaliation a try then let me bring you some bad news. Sorry but as a GI JOE fan I expected more from this sequel. First of all the only returning characters from the first film are Duke, Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow and Cobra Commander, and Zartan. This would not be a problem if we got an explanation as to why the other characters are missing but we get no such thing in this sequel. The premise of GI JOE: Retaliation is that Zartan now disguised as the US President is looking to free Cobra Commander and help him use a satellite weapon called ZEUS to force every other country in the world to submit to Cobra as this weapon is 10 times more powerful than any nuke on earth and it has none of the drawbacks like nuclear fallout. In order to do this, Zartan as the president orders the GI JOE team to be terminated, and here is where the movie really deviates from what GI JOE is. In the first movie we saw that the GI JOE's had an awesome base, with highly advanced technological equipment. This time around GI JOE is pretty much guns, guns and more guns with none of the gadgets or characters that GI JOE is really known for. SPOILERS ALERT SPOILER ALERT!

This movie was supposed to be released last year, but when test audiences found out that Duke the leader of the JOE's played by Channing Tatum died in the movie they did not like that, so the studio set the movie back a year in order to change that. Duke doesn't die in the first 5 minutes of the movie, instead he dies about 10 minutes in, effectively reducing the GI JOE team to 3 members, none of which where in the last movie, of course they get joined by Snake Eyes later on who adds one more to their team in the form of Jinx, but by then the movie has pretty much everything that made the last one great. I saw the movie in 3D and I have to say that it doesn't exactly make it better but the scenes that are done in 3D are very well done in my opinion. The addition of Bruce Willis is welcome as he actually adds to the mood of the movie, and if you're a fan of the GI JOE comics you will recognize him as the original GI JOE. Unfortunately this also turns the GI JOE movie into a movie that is more alike to DIE HARD than to the original GI JOE.

Although the plot is a good one, it is very poorly executed and not as fun as the original. It feels as if the movie was thrown together quickly in order to cash in, and has very little redeeming qualities even with the new characters, the movie could pretty much be called Snake Eyes and friends, because the only real good action scenes are his.

If you have a choice I would avoid this movie for now unless you want to watch it in 3D, but overall it left me and other viewers desiring for much more and it never delivered much on anything. The characters are poorly developed, even the ones from the previous movies, the fact that most of the originals do not return and the fact that the de facto leader of the JOE's Duke dies really destroys the GI JOE franchise for me, not to mention they went ahead and turned it into an action movie with some GI JOE characters thrown in there.

Drake's Reviews Score 6 out of 10