Review written Nov 9 2009, rediscovered 2023, and posted unaltered.

G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Directed by Stephen Sommers

I am a hardcore GI Joe fan, but only Real American Hero and its continuations. As such I am very critical of some of the liberties taken with the characters in this movie, but in the end I was pretty satisfied with the movie. Read on!

Rise Of Cobra is interesting in that Cobra and its commander don’t really exist for most of the movie. Instead, Destro and his M.A.R.S. organization are the heavies, with some support from the beautiful Baroness Anastasia DeCobray, the ninja Storm Shadow, and Zartan the master of disguise. Thus, this movie chronicles the rise of Cobra Commander and his terrorist organization determined to rule the world.

It is the “near future”. The original Marvel comic as written by Larry Hama was based on actual military tactics, history, and machines, while enhanced with lots of futuristic touches such as laser cannons and Jump-jet packs. This movie updates the franchise for the new millenium. New technology here include nanomites, accelorator suits, and other gadgets. Yet even so, updated versions of classic vehicles such as the Night Raven jet and V.A.M.P. jeeps appear. Basically, just as GI Joe was futuristic for the 80’s, this is futuristic for the now.

The acting here is bad bordering on terrible. This Channing Tatum guy can’t act at all. Dennis Quaid pours the cheeze-wiz on every line of dialogue that General Hawk delivers. Marlon Wayons (Rip Cord), Rachel Nichols (Scarlet), and Sienna Miller (Baroness) are passable. The heavies tend to get the best roles and the best actors: Arnold Vosloo (Zartan) steals every scene he is in, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is surprisingly serpentine as Cobra Commander. Christopher Eccleston is good as the Scottish arms dealer Destro, just menacing enough while also dignified and cool. Also, it’s nice to see Jonathan Pryce in anything.

The direction, by that hack Stephen Sommers (The Mummy) is gawd-awful. He throws awkward flashback scenes in frequently with no real sense of flow. Check out The Watchmen for how to effectively do a flashback. His action scenes are pretty damn exciting, but you get a sense that a better director could have provided some more fluidity.

I’ll give you an example. The climactic sword fight between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow is decent, and Ray Park of course is the best at what he does. However, when you compare what he does here as Snake Eyes to what he did as Darth Maul, it’s underwhelming. That’s because the director doesn’t know how to shoot a scene like this, that should be an epic monumental battle.

And speaking of Darth Maul, what’s with the blatant Star Wars ripoffs? “Stay on target! Eject!” Double-bladed sword fights, taking place in a room that looked a hell of a lot like like the one in Phantom Menace?

And what’s with Brendan Fraser’s cameo? Did he ever speak more than 4 words in a row, or was he basically just grunting?

Anyway, if you can ignore these quibbles what you have here is a sci-fi action film with some cool gimmicks and is very enjoyable. The die hard Marvel fas get a Larry Hama cameo, as well as nice touches like Breaker chewing some bubble gum and General Hawk in a wheelchair. Even Storm Shadow’s fate echoes back to what happened in the Marvel series, and I can’t wait to see it play out in the next movie. Even though I think Snake Eyes taking a vow of silence is beyond stupid.

DVD special features are pretty scarce even on this 2-disc edition. There are no deleted scenes so, unfortunately, I am certain that some sort of deluxe edition is coming. That scene from the trailer when Destro asks, “What did you say your unit was called again?” and Hawk responds, “I didn’t,” isn’t in the movie. There are definitely scenes out there that didn’t make the cut. You get the audio commentary track with the entertaining Sommers (I may not like his work but that doesn’t mean I don’t like him as a person) and two featurettes. I think this lack of extras is a bit of a ripoff and I could care less about the digital copy.

This movie is obviously the first of a franchise (Dennis Quaid is signed to three films) and it really whets the appetite for the next film. There’s even a cliffhanger/teaser ending. You only really get to know five or six Joes so I’m anxious to see who will depicted in the next film. My personal wishlist includes Stalker, and I hope Major Bludd shows up too.

If you’re a fan of action films and you don’t care about acting or realism, you’ll dig GI Joe. If you’re a diehard like me, you’ll love seeing some of the toys you owned flying around on screen. I would say that GI Joe was a more successful adaptation than the dreadful Transformers films.

3/5 stars.  Very flawed, but acceptably entertaining.