The first film was a horrendous CGI filled mess that offered nothing in terms of intelligence or originality, although its scope and grandiose finale did warrant some positive feedback. Have people learned from the previous film? well no, is it me or does every action film these days have destruction porn in it? I mean seriously...
Cutting to the chase this is exactly the same drab, cheesy, bland, generic, shoot em' up crapola we see all the time now, there is nothing original here, nothing to applaud, its in fact worse than the cartoonish original. I'd say about less than 10 minutes into the film and I knew it was gonna be shit. The first bit of action we see, a fight sequence that is nothing more than the usual slow motion fancy ass martial arts showcasing that is so SO overused these days, every damn film. Straight away we know the film has no creativity of its own its gonna be one of those films again.
From then on its pretty much exactly what you would expect from a cookie cutter film like this. The usual macho posing and attempted humorous dialog between characters to try and make them appealing yet comes across as exactly that...posing. Every member of cast is covered head to toe in layers of makeup, all of them having the heaviest tan and whitest teeth jobs I've seen good God! could these people be more artificial! Johnson looks like a tattooed hotdog and his arms are perpetually glistening...oh for the love of...
Everything about this film is utterly stupid, Lady Jaye always looks good, doesn't matter if she's in a combat situation, soaking wet, preparing to go undercover, just got up, whatever...she is always plastered with makeup and her hair is always perfect. I know it doesn't seem like a big gripe but its shit like this that just makes these types of films such a joke. She's knee deep in blood with bombs going off all around her but she's still got her max factor on and her hair looks glamorous, sheesh!
The reason this film is actually worse than the first is mainly because, and you're gonna love this, there isn't as much happening!! Yep believe it or not this film isn't saturated in bad CGI, this time they have gone the other way and just cut out most of the action! Nothing much really happens accept for an attack on the Joes' at the start, a battle on a cliff face with Snake Eyes and then the obligatory explosive finale. The rest is just close up shots of the pretty cast , Johnson's big shiny arms and lots of gun porn, lots of gun porn.
Might just add, if you're looking for the most ridiculous fight sequence for sometime, you might wanna watch the cliff side battle with Snake Eyes and a never ending stream of ninjas on ropes. This is the 'Mortal Kombat' looking sequence basically (it had to happen) and has them all swinging across a massive vertical drop from rope to rope like Tarzan. It doesn't get more toonish than this folks, oh and Snake Eyes is carrying Storm Shadow at the same time just in case it wasn't ridiculous enough.
Despite this being a film based on a kids franchise you still gotta pay attention to the plot geez! Many characters, flashbacks, lots of dumbass names flying around, you gotta think about it at times. It also makes me laugh at how blasé the plot is about the destruction of London! millions clearly die yet its no biggie, and you know they just have to show some kind of destruction porn, gotta squeeze it in somewhere.
Bit cheap the way they handled Destro, clearly weren't getting Eccleston back for the role so they just leave him in that water tank prison thingy. Not sure why either I thought he and Cobra Commnader were a team, why did he leave him?
I knew exactly what to expect with this yet I also thought they had done something positive with it. I thought they had tried to make it slightly more sensible, sure I still expect the explosion porn and the gun porn and the gun sound effects porn etc...but its still a piece of crap. We do see some killing and a hint of blood so that's a good sign, unfortunately its swamped by terrible acting, terrible action sequences which mainly show lots of big slow vehicles blowing up and totally and utterly generic unoriginal choreographed fighting. There's no real grit or rawness here, its all so polished, slick and painfully fabricated visually, what's the point in that?
This franchise has become the new 'Transformers' for me, its the epitome of complete and total modern day Hollywood drivel that is churned out over and over and over. They messed up the first and they've had a chance to do something about it but have simply tossed out another factory line pile of poo. The one and only decent thing I thought they did well was Cobra Commander's outfit and that's it, that looked really good. I also thought the use of kinetic bombardment as a weapon of mass destruction was the only half original idea here, an interesting concept.
Apart from those tiny plus points the rest is about as good as the mindless, incapable, inept and never ending hordes of henchmen that get mown down by the invincible heroes without breaking sweat. Seriously don't these bad guys ever train their men? they're like dummies in a shooting gallery for Pete's sake! literately running into the bullets.
3.5/10
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