...Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

I don't remember hearing anything about a GI Joe movie until a good bit after the first Transformers film came out. Which means, and I could be entirely wrong, that it took them far less than two years to create. If true, I can't say I'm surprised. I'm forty-six minutes into a one hundred seventeen minute movie about toys I grew up playing with (hell it's even got a fancy Hasbro logo at the beginning), and I have never wanted to turn it off more.

What better place to start than the beginning. The cold open, if you can call it that in a movie, comes up and what do you see? A horse and buggy outside a castle. The date pops up on the bottom of the screen: 1641. What? Wait, is this the right movie? It said Hasbro earlier. I wonder how many people got up to check that they hadn't taken a wrong turn somewhere...

In 1641 James McCullen, the seriously-elder, was caught by someone or other selling weapons to both sides of a war. That's usually a bad idea, and so they put a red-hot iron mask on his head. And, as an image of torture is exactly the kind of thing we want associated with a "Real American Hero", now seems the most appropriate time to roll the logo. Of course, we're not looking at "Real American Heroes" anymore, as the unit was put together by a group of ten countries. WTF? You don't need to instill a sense of multi-culturalism into my childhood!


Post-logo, we have present day James McCullen as the head of MARS Industries. A weapons dealer. Of course. Because generations of people generally stay in the same line of work for 350 years. He's created Nanomites. Tiny little mechanical bugs that eat just about anything you throw at them. The Army is accepting delivery of the first four of them shortly.

Channing Tatum is Duke. Yeah, I know, I wouldn't have done it either. But you know what I really wouldn't have done? Marlon Wayans as Ripcord. Don't get me started. They're Army and their squad is in charge of transporting the warheads to whereever they're going (we never find out). Driving down the road, Ripcord says, "Excuse me, Duke, but I am incorrect in thinking we were meant to stop approximately one mile back?", to which Duke responds, "My dear Ripcord, I do believe you are correct. Well, it appears that something may be afoot."

What? You don't believe they talk that way? Would I lie to you? Anyway... The Baroness (played better than most by Sienna Miller) and her goons are attacking because, of course, they want the warheads. They almost get them, but then the Joes show up and lay the smack down. Now, this is the part where I tell you my knowledge of the GI Joe mythos is not the most in depth. Apparantly the Baroness is named Anna, and she knows Duke in a previously romantical manner. I do not know if this is true to the original, but I'm under the impression that being true to the original was not the most important concept to director Stephen Sommers or the six-person writing crew.

Next, the Joes have the bomb(s), and they're secret Egyptian base comes under attack by the Baroness, and this time she's got Stormshadow with her. Out of place cameo by Brendan Fraser. And all of a sudden the Cobras have the bombs, and their gonna make Nanomites eat the Eiffel Tower. This is the part of the movie where I have officially stopped caring. Involved in the chase to stop the consumption of the Eiffel Tower are Stormshadow and the Baroness vs Snake Eyes being a bad-ass, Scarlett (Rachel Nichols might not be the best actress, but damn...) with some insane motorcycle navigation, and Duke and Ripcord in person-enhancing mechanical suits. And somehow, they still manage to fire a warhead at the Tower. The unsuccessful chase, thankfully, gave Duke and Ripcord the chance to destroy more cars than people I know or have known own or have owned. Seriously, Paris was probably not too happy with the Joes after this one.

Ok, before I forget, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has no business playing a character like the Doctor. It was weird and awkward every time I saw him, and I honestly thought at first that it was Keanu Reeves. The last thing you want as an actor is to be mistaken for Reeves.

Now, the French have captured the Joes with the exception of Snake Eyes, who ran off rather than be captured, and Duke, who was captured by the Baroness and Stormshadow. In case you don't recall, Stormshadow and Snake Eyes are adoptive brothers. Snake Eyes is the adopted one who found greater favor in the eyes of their father. This leads both to anamosity between the brothers who work for opposite sides and to lots of flashbacks to the two of them fighting as children. As it turns out I don't care that much about their history.

Alright, everyone's pissed at the Joes and they've all been called back to their respective countries for a good scolding. General Hawk (Dennis Quaid) tells them that while they've been called back, they haven't been told when to go or what route to take. See, this way, they can go find Duke! Yay!

Once they've arrived at Cobra's base (they still aren't called Cobra, although there have been allusions), Duke tries to run off with the warhead case and gets a shryuiken in the back from Stormshadow. Sneaky Duke, however, manages to turn on the tracking beacon on the case. Now the Joes can find him!

Now it's time for the Doctor to put Duke on a table and talk for an unnecessarily long time about what's going on prior to actually injecting him with Nanomites. We must secretly be in a 007 movie! Well, that can only make it better. Yeah, so they're gonna turn Duke into a Nanomite soldier unless Scarlett and Ripcord can find him in the giant Antarctic layer in time.

McCullen is launching the missles that contain the Nanomite warheads. Snake Eyes grabs a motorcycle and shoots a rocket at the Beijing missle, and it blows up safely. The other two make it away, so Ripcord has to go up in a fancy-ass plane that was lying around and shoot down the other ones. Somehow, btw, when Stormshadow hears that one of the missles went down, he simply knows that it was Snake Eyes. Sensible.

Baroness realizes the error of her ways and that she's in love with Duke, and so slaps the Doctor (really her brother, unbeknownst to her) upside the head with something heavy. The Doctor lays her out by pushing a button, because of course she was a Nanomite soldier, and thus completely under the control of the bad guys. Doc threatens to kill her by pushing a button, McCullen walks in, there's a big damn mess of dialog that makes me want to shove sharp things in my ear, and then Ripcord saves Moscow and, presumably, Washington. There's a Nanomite soldier inside the bunker with the President. He shoots everyone but the President. Some unseen antagonist walks in and makes the President understand what this whole thing is about, although it didn't do much for me.

Duke wakes the Baroness up and carries her out of a now exploding underwater Antarctic lair. The Doc throws McCullen into a submarine and takes off. Duke and the B take off after them in another sub. Somehow, now that Anna (formely known as the Baroness) is good, she gets to show more cleavage.

Doc decides to detonate an icepack. For no reason at all this causes windows to break on the underwater base. I officially hate myself for even watching this movie at this point. Lots of cheering which presumably means the Joes won. The Doc gives McCullen a fancy red shot and it turns McCullen into a metal faced Nanomite soldier. Hey, it's Destro! The Doc puts on a new mask and decides that he's now Cobra Commander. Yay, it's time for a sequel!

Afterthoughts: It certainly seemed like a good idea to watch this movie. It probably even seemed like a good idea to make it. Unfortunately, good ideas rarely work out as good as they sound. I feel bad for Mr. Gordon-Levitt, as I seem to remember him being a great up-and-coming actor about three years ago. He was in all these indie films and doing awesome and all of a sudden he signs on for this trash. I also apologize if this post started to feel ramble-y but I started watching the movie yesterday (and writing this post), then had to go do something, came home with possible swine flu, and now I just finished it while feeling pretty crappy. Deal with it. :)

Anyway. Things that should have been awesome but ended up sucking:

• Hawk played by Dennis Quaid. I like Quaid, but this was pretty bad.
• Hawk saying "Knowing is half the battle". I would have expected it to be great to hear this line in the movie, but I guess I was wrong.
• Back story on Cobra. Should have just jumped right in. Skip this Rise of Cobra nonsense.
• Snake Eyes and Stormshadow. Fights should have been awesome, but the choreography was pretty bad.
• Really, the whole damn movie was terrible.