Oh my God, this movie was so dumb. And not just "it's a summer popcorn flick!" dumb or "it's based on a line of toys!" dumb. It's "dropped on its head as an infant" dumb. It makes Rise of Cobra look like Citizen Kane. You guys know the deal with this film, right? How it got pushed back from summer 2012 to March because it didn't test well? Apparently, the test audiences were disappointed with how few scenes Channing Tatum had so they went back and shot some completely superfluous ones that could be added in to the finished film. It didn't change the plot in any way, and served only to bog down the opening of the movie. Without those scenes, the movie zips along from one action piece to another. That's all that's really expected of it.
The Joes, led by Duke (Channing Tatum) are sent into Pakistan to retrieve a couple of nukes after their president gets assassinated. They get the nukes no problem but are betrayed by their government when it comes to extraction. Only four Joes survive: Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki), and Flint (D.J. Cotrona) by jumping into a well, and Snake Eyes (Ray Park) by not being anywhere near Pakistan.
The first three Joes manage to get from Pakistan all the way to Washington, D.C. where they learn that the President of the United States (Jonathan Pryce) has declared them a terrorist organization and is claiming Snake Eyes killed the Pakistani president and was captured. But, surprise, surprise, it's not Snake Eyes, it's actually Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) who just wanted to get into the super-secret prison where Destro and Cobra Commander (Luke Bracey) were being held. After being freed, Cobra Commander joins up with his buddy Zartan, Master of Disguise (Arnold Vosloo, but mostly Jonathon Pryce) to take the world hostage by forcing everyone to fire and then self-destruct all their nuclear weapons.
The Joes, operating out of an abandoned gym, manage to put all of this together and, with the help of Original Joe Colton (Bruce Willis), save the day.
I will go ahead and admit, I thought the first movie was at least fun, while being completely ridiculous. This movie is just ridiculous. They re-use the same trope they did with the Baroness by having Storm Shadow suddenly realize he had been manipulated since childhood and decide to team up with the Joes. There was also an undercurrent of blatant sexism that I did not enjoy at all.
Ok, so Duke is the Captain, right? He dies and the mantle of leadership gets passed to the next highest rank, in this case, it would be Lady Jaye, a lieutenant. Instead, she makes a point of saying to Roadblock, a sergeant major, that he is in charge now. She also had her hair down for 80% of the runtime, even in uniform which made my eye twitch, and the one moment of character-building was her sob story about how she joined the military because Daddy always wanted a boy and didn't think women should serve in combat. He died before she could rub it in his face. Boo hoo. Then, what do you know, a surrogate father-figure shows up and treats her just like dear old dad did, refusing to learn her name and according her only the most basic interest. But, hey, at least she fared better than poor Flint, who barely had any lines at all.
I was pleased to see Christopher Eccleston and Joseph Gordon-Levitt both had the good sense to stay away from this turkey. I don't know what Jonathan Pryce was thinking. The real winner here is Arnold Vosloo, who had approximately 2 seconds of face time and still got decent billing.
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