G.I. Joe is a franchise based upon a collection of Hasbro plastic soldiers. What can we really expect from it? Director Jon M. Chu – whose credits include Step Up 3D and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never – knows exactly what his pre-adolescent audience wants: spectacularly ridiculous histrionics; mutually implausible sci-fi elements; sardonic and inappropriate wise-cracks; a dutiful, good-looking cast to deliver them; and slack consideration for anything that may compromise these things. One of the rare occasions where a sequel is better than the original, the G.I. Joe cycle will never appeal to critics, but at least G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) never tries to.
Stuck between The Rock and a hard place is masked kung-fu assassin Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee), who is rescued from captivity by longtime nemesis Snake Eyes (Ray Park), head of the Joe ninja unit. They both indulge their physicality in Retaliation’s most memorable set-piece, a wire-worked, vertiginous sword fight in the Himalayan mountains. Other places that are not America Chu and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are less fond of: the Joes parachute into Pakistan to deactivate a nuclear warhead; it’s suggested that North Korea be nuked 15 times over “just to be sure”; the entire city of London is blown up.
One of Retaliation’s two female characters is Adrianne Palicki’s G.I Jaye; or rather ‘Lady’ Jaye, as the film titles her, lest we forget that girls are not allowed to play this game. She explains – whilst getting changed, one might add – that she joined the military to spite her sexist father who said “he would never put his life in the hands of a woman”. Her partner, Flint (D.J.Cotrona), who’s as weightless and ineffectual as his name suggests, tells her afterwards, “You look nice”. Like a boy with his toy.
Chris Fennell