Armed with a voucher from the local video rental outlet and a few bucks, I decided to take a punt on G.I. Joe to see who was right: the “haters” or the defenders. Use of the former always sets off alarm bells in my mind that the idiot who is whining this word is trying to apologise for something utterly terrible (check out Tom Cruise’s fans on the IMDB board in his name for a great example of this).

Unfortunately for everyone who starred in this abortion, it IS a complete artistic whitewash. If it were a Batman film, it would be one starring Adam West. If it were an attempt at a RoboCop sequel, it would be RoboCop 3. If it were an X-Men film, it would be X-Men: The Last Stand, or X-Men In Name Only as it is rightly called by the world’s real X-Men.

Web humorist Maddox once wrote a critique of the Daredevil film that, with slight modifications, sums this film up perfectly. Character development is either completely missing or is done so poorly that it is impossible to not imagine the script being written by the six year old version of me. You know a script is in poor shape when a terrorist army’s leader stops the climactic action scene dead in its tracks to explain to the audience where he came from. And the Cobra personnel being all implanted with a mind-controlling chip? Considering what is presently known about the neurological system of our species, such a thing is a hundred years away in the worst case scenario, not the few years the makers claimed in their publicity. I am all for suspension of disbelief, but suspension of disbelief requires that the writer keeps at least a toe in the realm of plausibility. Oddly enough, one technology that is here and now is that necessary to test whether the President really is the President as opposed to a really good impersonator. At least Dave had a halfway convincing story about how the impersonation could fool most people some of the time.

It is probably best not to even comment about the so-called action sequences, except to say that Hollywood needs Paul Verhoeven back now more than ever.

In closing, I think this film is best summarised by what I told my mother after seeing it. I would call it shit, but that would be a slur to the good name of fecal matter.

It was never going to be Shakespeare and yes it has a couple of low points – sorry Christopher but the accent is a bit wobbly – and really why bother with it. An English villain would have been fine.
The action was fast and furious with some original moments. People talk about the action in Paris but I thought the attack on the GI base was perhaps superior.
As an action / popcorn film it works just fine and my kids and I had a blast. Can’t say fairer than that from a movie!