Didn’t see 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra? No big whoop, because only two members of the titular elite military team return for the sequel, Retaliation, and one of them is a mute whose face you never see, while the other dies in the first act. In fact, only three Joes in that initial attack remain standing: Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson, Fast Five), Lady Jaye (Adrianne Paliciki, Red Dawn) and Flint (D.J. Cotrona, Venom).
The clean slate allows for an early franchise reboot, of which incoming director Jon M. Chu does not take full advantage. With Rise, Stephen Sommers didn’t leave the bar set all that high, but Chu fails to clear it nonetheless. Perhaps its lack of song-and-dance sequences proved too intimidating for the Step Up sequelizer, but so much of Retaliation feels like a retread — and worse, its back half bears the sunny-late-afternoon look of a direct-to-video sequel.
The Joes plot their revenge on archenemy Cobra, that über-evil organization which now has control over the White House, thanks to a POTUS double. In a nice nod to his Man with the Iron Fists passion project, The RZA plays a blind martial-arts master who imparts equal dollops of wisdom and training to the secondary ninja characters; meanwhile, the Joes enlist the aid of the original G.I. Joe, aka Joe, now retired. He’s played by Bruce Willis, who scowls through his extended cameo in such a way that he looks bothered to have come in on a Saturday. Joe’s house is an ode to the Second Amendment, with guns and other weaponry stashed behind cabinets, within hidey holes and in a safe whose code, naturally, is “1776.”
Too bad this second-parter isn’t as revolutionary. Chu stages one bang-up set piece, in which Snake Eyes (Ray Park, The Phantom Menace’s Darth Maul) engages in a swordfight against a squad of fellow ninjas … while leaping from cliffside to cliffside. The rest of the action is strictly at a superficial, shit-blows-up level: passively entertaining as it unloads, forgotten soon thereafter. —Rod Lott