Last night I had passes to go see District 9, a film I have been eagerly waiting to see for most of the summer. When I got to the theater they told me that the screening was full, but I could stick around and see GI Joe if I wanted too. I thought about it, and decided to go anyway.

When I was a kid I didn’t have GI Joe action figures. It wasn’t even an option for me, because in the U.K. there was no GI Joe, we had "Action Force: The International Hero", a show that I can only imagine was exactly the same aside from the title. Needless to say I wasn’t a fan, for me in the 80’s it was strictly Transformers. The stuff I have picked up on about the original GI Joe is as follows: Snake Eyes is bad ass. There are a lot of shootouts, but no one ever gets hit or dies. Cobra Commander sounds eerily Like Starscream

So what can I say about the movie? It was better than Transformers 2. Much better.  GI Joe does accomplish the action movie’s ultimate goal of being one of those films that exists in the moment. It’s great to watch now, but in a few years will be easily forgettable. It manages to exist in that area where you can suspend disbelief for the sake of being entertained, but not in a way that any scene that doesn’t have massive amounts of CGI is just torturous to watch.

Special effects are aplenty in this film, from futuristic vehicles, to holograms, to spy fish and nanobots. Nanobots are the films cure all, they seamlessly guide the story forward, mend plot points, define character motivation, they are the most malleable MacGuffin ever.

The characters are interesting enough as well, and they all seem to work well as translations from the source material. I may have been more ok with that as I don’t have any emotional investment in how they should appear. Marlon Wayans delivers a few lighthearted haha’s amongst everyone elses “This Is serious stuff, we’re all super serious” motif.

In conclusion, if you like action films GI Joe is the film to see now, it is a film that requires only one viewing, and I can only hope that the final gross at the box office exceeds what Transformers 2 makes. Which might be the only thing that will convince Michael Bay, director of “The biggest flopping success” in movie history that he could in fact do more.

KevinRFarren

www.vagueambition.com

www.bayoucitybeat.org