G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
TOMATOMETER
Critics Consensus: Though arguably superior to its predecessor, G.I. Joe: Retaliation is overwhelmed by its nonstop action and too nonsensical and vapid to leave a lasting impression.
Critics Consensus: Though arguably superior to its predecessor, G.I. Joe: Retaliation is overwhelmed by its nonstop action and too nonsensical and vapid to leave a lasting impression.
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Movie Info
In this sequel, the G.I. Joes are not only fighting their mortal enemy Cobra; they are forced to contend with threats from within the government that jeopardize their very existence. -- (C) Paramount- Rating:
- PG-13 (for intese sequences of combat violence and martial arts action throughout, and for brief sensuality and language)
- Genre:
- Action & Adventure , Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Directed By:
- Jon M. Chu
- Written By:
- Paul Wernick , Rhett Reese
- In Theaters:
- Mar 28, 2013 Wide
- On DVD:
- Jul 30, 2013
- US Box Office:
- $122.5M
Cast
-
Bruce Willis
as General Joe Colton -
Channing Tatum
as Duke -
Dwayne "The Rock" Jo...
as Roadblock -
D.J. Cotrona
as Flint -
Byung-hun Lee
as Storm Shadow -
Adrianne Palicki
as Jaye
Related News & Features
-
G.I. Joe 3 Needs a Director
– Collider.com
-
Parental Guidance: The Smurfs 2 and Europa Report
– Rotten Tomatoes
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LoginCritic Reviews for G.I. Joe: Retaliation
All Critics (161) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (45) | Rotten (116) | DVD (3)
Did you think a second G.I. Joe movie was a good idea?
The filmmakers appear to have handed a dozen or so G.I. Joe dolls to a 9-year-old, watched him play for 110 minutes, and then shot a scene-for-scene remake.
What a blast G.I. Joe: Retaliation is! And then another blast, and another, in a series of concussive jolts that shred any conventional sense of story as thoroughly as anything since the last Michael Bay film.
When it comes to big and loud, this is the movie to beat for at least this week; what makes it entertaining is its unabashed wallow in these qualities ...
Plays like a tiresomely extended evening of channel surfing.
No go, "Joe."
A terrible film with a confusing plot, jarring tonal fluctuations, characters that engender no sympathy, and a strangely flippant attitude toward violence.
Bruce Willis, The Rock, explosions, comedy and action help this popcorn sequel rise above its more Sci-Fi predecessor, but even fans caught up in the action will occasionally find this live action film to be just a bit too cartoonish.
A very flawed film, but it's superior to the first installment in every way.
[Jon M.] Chu is a stylish director, and it's fun to watch him blow things up. He also paces the material furiously. For awhile, this strategy works. But, as with most movies that don't have any substance, the pomposity and spectacle grow tiresome.
I'd be hard-pressed to call any of it 'exciting'; mostly the film just chugs along, steadily going from one plot point to the next, neither engaging us nor boring us.
This action-packed drama is as bland and forgettable as its predecessor.
It's pretty bad. You don't need me to tell you that.
Has a great deal more grace and goodwill than its predecessor. It moves well, offers up the occasional surprise, and never takes itself too seriously.
Dumb, hyperkinetic fun.
I was prepared for the expected amount of flag-waving nonsense in this film, but one sequence with a Cobra member posing as the President of the United States is so offensive, it seems like it was an outtake from Team America: World Police.
Dizzyingly entertaining celebration of fireballs, wire-assisted martial arts and high-calibre firepower has more grace and poise than Die Hard 5...will surely make up for those disappointed with the so-so 2009 film.
While it might be the height of critical cliché (and analytically wrong) to call G.I. Joe: Retaliation "a real American Zero," if the combat boot fits...
Explosions and action figures.
This film had no use of the 3D.
Retaliation isn't hatefully dumb - it's entertainingly dumb. But even after the umpteen millions it cost to make, it never comes close to capturing the imagination like three 3/4" action figures can.
Marries the steroidal firepower of the US armed forces with the narrative sense and technical elegance of a twelve year old playing with his action figures.
Tea Party paranoia about Obama's alien identity and fascist agenda apparently motivated this disappointing sequel, which pits the Joes against an impostor U.S. president (Jonathan Pryce) working for the evil forces of Cobra.
As to be expected, Johnson actually imbues his character with some humanity, but in the cacophony that is this movie, this doesn't really amount to much.
Routine action adventure but that mountainside battle is one for the record books.
Audience Reviews for G.I. Joe: Retaliation
Originally intended to be released in the summer of 2012, G.I. Joe: Retaliation was pulled back because, presumably, they wanted to convert it to 3D, but many suspected it was to add more time for star Channing Tatum after his box-office domination that year. Well, wrong on both accounts, because maybe it was merely kicked back because, get this, it's not terribly good. I had the lowest possible expectations for the 2009 G.I. Joe movie but came away having a fun time; it was the right kind of enjoyably stupid. Well now it's just stupid. Cobra has kidnapped the president, inserted a doppelganger, and now wants to rule the world that to an evil satellite that drops giant metal rods into space as weapons. Why are these rods not part of the Earth's orbit after release? There are all sorts of gadgets here that make no sense but somebody thought might sell some toys. The central storyline is almost a knockoff of Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol, a small group of Joes having to clear their names. Then because that isn't enough material to work with, there's a mini-movie about ninja warriors avenging their fallen master in the mountains, and of all people, the RZA is supplying lengthy exposition. The action sequences are absurd without having enough style to excuse the absurdity. Everyone is a superhuman but also incompetent when the plot demands it (ninjas can shoot flying knives but not a big person jumping off a wall?). Adding The Rock is always a bonus in my book; the man is charisma personified. But the storyline of Retaliation is so sloppy, the villains so lame, and the movie lacks the high-spirited imagination to keep the stupid at bay. I was never a G.I. Joe kid so maybe those with nostalgia will be more charitable than I am, but G.I. Joe: Retaliation is a poorly executed next step for a once-budding franchise.
Nate's Grade: C
Super Reviewer
Compared to the first movie, 'G.I. Joe : Retaliation' wasn't meet everybody's expectation of a better sequel.. The death of Duke character at the beginning of the movie, and then the change of the leader into Dwayne Johnson wasn't as smooth as they predicted.. Truthfully, I must say that the scene stealer show is (and still from the the first movie) Byung-hun Lee as Storm Shadow and D.J. Cotrona who made a quite scene stealer performance as Flint.. Overall, I wasn't hope for another sequel of this movie but if Hasbro still want some profit maybe they can make at least another movie of this movie..
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Super Reviewer
They certainly made great strides over their first try, but it still just isn't quite there yet. Shades of awesome, and a whole lot of filler. The action is decent enough, but never quite feels up-to-par. The tone of the humor is established from the get-go, with lots of goofy one-liner attempts all over the place that never quite hit their mark. Also, the story just isn't incredibly exciting. I've heard rumblings of a third film trying to gain traction, but they'll still have some work to do if they want to do this franchise right.
MoreSuper Reviewer
While no better than a series of elaborately choreographed music videos with a bunch of uninspiring teen movie clichés to fill out their running times, Jon M. Chu proved with his two "Step Up" films that he could really direct a high energy, color saturated set piece. With "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," Chu proves that his skills don't translate to directing mega budget action films and that it is possibly to screw up about movie about ninjas fighting super soldiers. "Retaliation" is not only worse than its predecessor, the goofily hyperactive "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," it's easily one of the most tiresome, unenthusiastic popcorn movies in years.
Dwayne Johnson stars Roadblock, the second in command of an international Special Forces organization lead by Channing Tatum's Duke. Chu does well with a pre-credits sequence that highlights the efficiency of Joe team. It's directed well with a clarity and humor and quickly gives way to a scene where Johnson and Tatum bond while playing a Call of Duty style video game that the viewer is at first lead to believe is life or death combat. Though neither of these segments are particularly revolutionary, they are dynamic and suggestive of a film that is better "Retaliation" ends up being.
As soon as the enjoyable relationship between Tatum and the Rock is established, it's destroyed after Duke, and most of the cast of the first film apparently, are killed in an attack ordered by an imposter President (Jonathan Pryce). The rest of the film is follows three separate plotlines: Johnson and surviving Joes, Adrianne Palicki and D.J. Cotrona, plotting to wrest control of the government from their enemies, lone wolf Joe Snakes Eyes (Ray Park) and his apprentice Jinx (Elodie Yung) as they hunt down renegade ninja Storm Shadow (Lee Byung-hun), and Cobra Commander (Luke Bracey) and Firefly (Ray Stevenson) as they slowly work to take over the world. By (poorly) dividing the narrative focus three ways, it loses momentum. By killing off the film's funniest character, it loses its heart.
What's left is a bland series of action movie clichés. The heroes return home to regroup and plan. The young heroes enlist a retired mentor figure (Bruce Willis) to join the battle after a setback. And a female soldier's motivation revealed as an unresolved disagreement with a parent - information relayed while the character is undressing because the movie doesn't trust the audience to not get bored during a conversation. When the small human moments of an action movie fall flat, all the action scenes follow suit. And Chu isn't a Michael Bay level stylist; the boring parts aren't even profoundly numbing, they are just silly and arduous.
There are moments in the film that break up the tedium but they are few and far between. Walton Goggins plays a super prison warden with zero authenticity and maximum swagger which makes him the smartest performer in the film. Jonathan Pryce has a lot of fun hamming it up as a shape shifter with a penchant for one liners and his joy is infectious. And the film's best sequence, critically misplaced in the middle of film, where Snake Eyes and Jinx battle a horde of ninjas in a mountain fortress, is actually great. It's just narrative inconsequential and so much better than the finale that at throws the film out of balance.
No one goes into a movie called "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" expecting a great piece of cinema, you go in wanting to see bullets getting chopped in half by katanas and mini-guns being used in a one on one gun fight. When it fails, by being unfocused and lazy it's a special kind of disappointing. Because the expectations are so low, when a film misses the bar by this much it's completely confounding. How did a director, two veteran screenwriters, a cast full of experienced actors, a toy company that's produced six feature films and a film studio that carefully test its films as a matter of course make a film this terrible? How can thousands of people take $135 million and make something so totally uninteresting?
Super Reviewer
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Quotes
- Cobra Commander:
- The Cobra Revolution has begun.
- Cobra Commander:
- I want it all!
- Cobra Commander:
- Destro, you're out of the band!
- Firefly:
- Let me see that face!
- Duke:
- Hell yeah!
- Firefly:
- Boom!
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