Stars Dwayne Johnson, Jonathan Pryce, DJ Cotrona, Byung-Hun Lee, Adrianne Palicki, Elodie Yung, Ray Stevenson, with Walton Goggins, Ray Park, RZA, Channing Tatum and Bruce Willis Directed by Jon M Chu GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra was a fairly entertaining if fluffy piece of action entertainment. It was quite straight forward and slightly futuristic-set action movie with our heroes, the GI Joes, and villains, Cobra, having all sorts of high-tech gadgetry while battling it out with each other. Of course, the heroes won the day, a couple of the bad guys got put into some very high-tech prison, but one got away by impersonating the President of The United States. Come the sequel, and - surprise, surprise - it's actually a step up, thanks to director Jon Chu (of Step Up 2 The Streets and Step Up 3D). It's also a step away from most the high-tech stuff that permeated the first movie, giving this one a little more grounding as the Joes are knocked down to bare basics while Cobra are the ones with the leg-up and all the advanced technology at their disposal. It's almost James Bond-ian upon reflection. The villains have nothing less than World Domination in their sights, although part of their plan is something any average peace loving pundit would utterly admire. It was an utterly ingenious (if radically dangerous) solution to a major problem in the world… and then they become the diabolical villains you want to hate all over again (something given away in the trailers yet again). Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson steps up to head the ensemble of stars with only a small handful of returning players, including Channing Tatum's Duke, Ray Park's fan favourite, Snake-Eyes, Byung-Hun Lee as Storm Shadow and Jonathan Pryce doing double duty as the good and bad versions of the President. Fairly early on, we are made aware that this is a different band of soldiers compared to what was presented before. It's somehow become less international and more gung-ho all-American, even with the addition of Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki) - depending on which version you follow, is either American, as featured in the movie, or Irish (if, like me, you got to know her through Action Force). And with Lady Jaye, we also have Flint (DJ Cotrona) appearing in the movie. Chu's handle on the action is decent, although there are a lot of extreme close-up shots during most of the hand-to-hand fight scenes. However, there are a lot of unique set-pieces which do lend to some truly entertaining moments for action fans. Anytime there's a sword fight scene, it's always cool by me, But Chu takes it one further (as showcased in most of the trailers) by having it as a major set-piece in the middle of the movie, while paying tribute to one of the comic series most famous and popular issues involving Snake Eyes. And like the comic, the set-piece plays out without any dialogue, is brilliantly conceived particularly as a 3D set-piece and makes Snake Eyes the badass he's supposed to be. In all, though, it's still down to being a decent action movie with a cliche-ridden plot, a slight improvement over its predecessor (some might say that's a given), carried by the charm of it's leading man (who has two more movies coming this year). The villains are of the boo-hiss variety although fans would love that Cobra Commander looks exactly as he should. The action choreography is good, but could have been better given what already is on screen. But that's really not going to matter in the end, right? As long as it entertains and you don't expect too much out of a movie that's based on toys and comics.
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