Glass (2019)

Glass (2019)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, James McAvay and Anya Taylor Joy

M Night Shyamalan’s a walking time bomb when it comes to quality. While one film might deliver, the next might disappoint. For example, the double knockout of Lady in the Water (2006) and The Happening (2008) were completely rejected by fans of the director and nearly destroyed Shyamalan’s career entirely. He’d lost the respect of many audience members out there. Had he lost it? Well, for a while there it seemed like so, like he’d lost that magic that makes directors produce a good film. Then he kicked back and made a horror film called The Visit (2015), about these pair of grandkids who go to visit grandma and grandpa in their house in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, working on a smaller budget did Shyamalan good because with The Visit, Shyamalan proved to us and himself that he could still make a good film. Shyamalan cemented his comeback with Split (2016) which presented us for the first time with the fascinating character called ‘The Beast’. An awesome performance is what carried that film and we got McAvoy to thank for that. His psychical and psychological transformations when he switches from personality to personality is one of the films biggest strengths. 

Split was also the film that united Split, Unbreakable and now Glass as films that coexist in the same universe, with characters from Unbreakable and Split crossing over onto this new film Glass. There was a lot of speculation in regards to the film. Would Shyamalan deliver one of his good ones? Does he still as they say “have it”? Was Split a fluke? Would this be a great sequel, or a forgettable one? 

I enjoyed Split a lot but I remember thinking it wasn’t original. We’d seen movies about psychos kidnapping people for vile purposes a million times before. But that performance and that tension Shyamalan directs so well got me reeled in. With Split I went back to that old saying “it’s not what you say but how you say it”, sure we’d seen this type of story before, but Shyamalan told it so very well! Now here comes Glass, the sequel in which we’d see all these fantastic characters clash. The Beast, The Overseer and Mr. Glass. So is it the big conclusion we all expect? Yes it is my dear readers. You feel that tension building all the way through, kind of how all those Rocky movies that all led up to the big fight in the end. Glass is a very fresh take on the whole superhero thing. It tones everything down, makes it more believable. This is not a big special effects spectacle, no, this movie is more about performances, tension and suspense. In that sense the film was a breath of fresh air. It was interesting to see a super hero film that wasn’t  90% computer generated. So yes, glad to inform that Glass focuses on gripping performance and a well written, tense script. 

When Unbreakable (2000) premiered I remember I didn’t know what to expect. The premise pulled everyone to see it. How and why had David Dunn survived that tragic train crash where everybody died, except him? A lot was expected of the second film from the  director of The Sixth Sense (1999), which had been a hit the previous year. When I went to theater to see Unbreakable the night of its premiere, did my comic book loving heart know that it would end up being a movie that explained the nature of comic books so well? Nope. And that blew me away! Here I was watching a film about something I loved so much. Back in 2000, super hero films were not as big as they are now, so seeing a film that talked about comic books, was something for me. The film used all we know and love about comics and analyzed it with style. To me Unbreakable was one of the films that helped kick off what would become a new era of comic book movies, and era that has been reigning supreme in Hollywood for almost two decades now.

Glass does the same thing yet again, it dives into comic book lore by analyzing the nature of the villain. Why are these villains so deranged? What makes them tick? What set them off? We get a good dose of that in Glass. It takes us deep into the psyche of the psychos Mr. Glass and The Beast. This movie belongs to McAvoy and Mr. Jackson on the performance side of things. Willis plays David, who’s job is to be stoic, strong and quiet, but McAvoy’s Beast loves to chat it up. Every single one of The Beasts 20 something personalities likes to say their piece! The real spectacle here is watching McAvoy do this masterful job of giving each one of the personalities a completely different performance. I’d dare say I’d consider this performance for an Oscar, or some sort of award. Fantastic performance, a memorable villain if there ever was one. 

So did Glass deliver? Hell yeah, it’s a good film. I don’t get these “bad reviews” that it got from critics? The general consensus out there is that critics hate it, but that fans love it. I don’t get why critics would hate it but I agree that a fan of Split and Unbreakable should be very pleased (and even surprised) by this movie. It takes the premise from Unbreakable and Split further. I congratulate Shyamalan for playing with heavy themes within the context of the comic book world. On Glass he played with that wonderful idea that we all have this potential to be amazing, that we are capable of more than we know, we just have to believe. So yeah, Glass delivers, another good one on Shyamalan’s cinematic crown. 

Rating: 4 out of 5 

Behind the Scenes Awesomeness: The Fifth Element (1995)

Conceptual Artwork 

Concept Art by Jean Paul Mezieres

Conceptual art by Jean Paul Gautier for Ruby Rod, back when Ruby Rod was going to be played by Prince 

Conceptual Artwork for Mandashowan spaceship by Jean Giraud 

Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Powers Booth, Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, Bruce Willis, Jeremy Piven, Christopher Lloyd, Jaime King, Lady Gaga

Sin City (2005) is to me, one of Robert Rodriguez finest days behind the camera, it was sheer cinematic perfection, the mood, the images, the words, everything flowed with amazing finesse and clarity. So of course when I heard that Rodriguez and Miller were teaming up again for a sequel, I was more than excited. True, Robert Rodriguez can be a hit or miss type of director, but you have to admit, when he’s running on all cylinders, the guy can make some damn entertaining movies. El Mariachi (1992), Desperado (1995) From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Planet Terror (2007) and Sin City (2005) are all high watermarks in his career. And let’s not forget his more “for the hell of it” films, like Machete (2010) and Machete Kills (2013), two great examples of the fun b-movies that Rodriguez is so good at making. Here’s a guy who understands Pulp Fiction, not the Tarantino movie, but the concept. He knows how entertaining over the top violence can be. To top things off, he’s got a kinetic style of storytelling, with a high emphasis on never letting the audience get bored. He wants to give you that shock, that cheap thrill, he wants you to chuckle and stare in awe at the screen. And on this aspect, Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For delivers the goods.

This time around we go back to the seedy underbelly of Basin City via four short stories all written by comic book mastermind Frank Miller. The stories are: A Dame to Kill For, Just Another Saturday Night, The Long Bad Night and Nancy’s Last Dance, which by the way was a story written specifically for the film. On this sequel we get to see many of the characters presented to us in the first film, like Marv, Nancy Callahan, Dwight, Gail, Hartigan and the evil Senator Roark. We are also presented to a whole bag of new ones like the wonderfully conniving Eva, played by Eva Green. She’s the ultimate seductress, using her sensual powers to get what she wants, seducing her way to anything. Welcome to Sin City, a place where nobody is squeaky clean. 

Going back to Sin City feels like I never left, the characters, the images, everything holds a certain familiarity to it. The film still has that distinctive black and white look and the characters talk in that special unmistakable Frank Miller talk. It’s cool to see the same characters again, the only thing you have to be ready for is that certain characters are now played by different actors, for example, the character of Dwight, who was played by Clive Owen in the first film, is now being played by Josh Brolin.  The character of  ‘Manute’, who in the first film was played by Michael Clarke Duncan is now played by Dennis Haysbert. Devon Aoki, who played deadly little Miho in the first film, has been replaced by Jamie Chung, and so forth. They are still the same characters, it’s just different actors playing then. Good news is that since they are all Frank Miller comic book characters, they still look and sound the same, you might not even notice the changes so much.

So this film is interesting because its half prequel, half sequel. Some of the stories take place before the first film, some after the first film. This is the reason why we see some characters who died in the first film back again, the most notable example would be Marv, who dies electrocuted in the ending of the first film. Marv is featured prominently in this film, which is a good move in my book since he was everyone’s favorite character from the first film. He looks just a bit different, but he’s still good old pill poppin’, head chopping Marv. The last story in the film, called Nancy’s Last Stand is a good old revenge tale with Nancy looking to avenge the death of Hartigan, the detective that saved her from being raped, and “the only man she ever loved”. So yeah, you’ll feel like your revisiting your favorite, most fucked up friends. This is the nature of Sin City, it’s not a pretty place; these aren't wholesome characters. The stories that Frank Miller cooks up for these Sin City graphic novels are about greedy, selfish characters, hatred and revenge pour out of their every pore.

Frank Miller gets lots of heat because his stories have been deemed ‘misogynistic’ by some…in the parlance of our times, misogynistic means that his stories display a certain amount of hatred towards women? Um, I’ve read most of the Sin City graphic novels and I don’t really see that at all. Actually, I honestly think that’s just a bunch of horse shit. Let me see, if I remember correctly, Hartigan saves a little girl from being raped…how is that misogynistic? That very same girl grows up, and Hartigan once again protects her from ‘that Yellow Bastard’ who wants to rape her and kill her? This very same girl that Hartigan saves, later becomes a strong female character by going out to avenge the death of the man who saved her. Not misogynistic. Some of his stories actually empower the female, by making them strong protagonists, like in Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For, where Nancy becomes a kick ass revenge hungry female lead.  Sure these are stories about prostitutes, so what, there are prostitutes in the real world so how is that displaying hatred towards women? Prostitutes are a real thing in the real world, especially in the world of Sin City. In the first film, Marv falls head over heels for “Goldie”, a woman he worships with every word that comes out of his mouth. Another character called Dwight protects a waitress named Shellie from a violent, psychotic ex-lover. In any case, if violence is inflicted upon women, it comes from villains, not from the heroes who always protect the women, or love them with tremendous amounts of love and admiration. And it’s not like women are always depicted as being helpless victims, just ask the girls of old town, who can more than take care of themselves. If you ask me, Miller actually displays respect and admiration towards women, not hatred. Miller actually addresses some very real issues about women, issues that need to be addressed and talked about. So get outta here with your self righteous sanctimonious bull crap. These are stories about a town called Sin City, if you can’t take the heat, get out of hell’s kitchen. 

Truth be told, being accused of being misogynistic is the smallest of Miller’s problems; what Miller really received a lot of heat for was for a story he drew and wrote called ‘Holy Terror’; a story that at one point was going to be one of the most controversial Batman stories ever told. At one point it was going to be called ‘Holy Terror, Batman!’ But through the course of creating this tale, Miller decided this was no longer a Batman story, so he changed the main character from Batman into a new character of his own creation called ‘The Fixer’ and printed the graphic novel through Legendary instead of DC.  But originally, Holy Terror was going to be all about Batman kicking Al Qaedas ass and killing a whole bunch of terrorists. The thing with Holy Terror is that Miller lived in New York during 9/11, and it affected him in a big way, Holy Terror was made as a direct response to that. Miller has gone down as saying “I can tell you squat about Islam, I don’t know anything about it. But I know a goddamn lot about Al Qaeda and I want them all to burn in hell”. So yeah, his public hatred towards Al Qaeda garnered hatred from many. Miller knew this was going to happen. He labels the book as “Propaganda” that is “bound to offend just about everybody” But then again, if we look back in time, Captain America and Batman both kicked Hitler’s ass in their own time, so to Miller, having Batman kick Al Qaeda’s ass was just a way to pay homage to those classic politically charged comics and a way to comment on the 9/11 attacks. Does it show hatred towards Muslims? Or just towards a small terrorist group? Is it racist? I don’t know because I have yet to read it, but you can’t expect a review of it here soon. Whatever the case maybe, Miller doesn't back down from his work, he makes no apologies for it, and maybe this is why as a form of retaliation, Sin City 2 has sadly tanked at the box office. I doubt that many people have read Holy Terror, but god knows there’s a couple of sites, and a couple of blogs and articles out there spewing nothing but hatred for it. It could be that this all backfired on Miller and now Sin City 2 is suffering at the box office for it.  

This is all too bad, because to me Sin City 2 is fun times, as fun and mean spirited as the first film was. Many have labeled it as “more of the same” and I have to say that I agree. To me this sequel being more of the same doesn’t bother me one bit because I love the film noir world of Sin City, if it’s more of what I loved from the first film then so be it, I welcome it. I got no problems with these stories being about prostitutes and psychotic characters, this is Sin City, keyword ‘Sin’. If I had to say something negative about the film is that the stories from the first film where slightly more shocking and darker…by comparison these stories feel somewhat less important. It’s not that they don’t chop off enough heads or that there isn’t enough white blood, there’s tons of violence and nudity to garner the film it’s ‘R’ rating, but by comparison, the stories from the first film felt like they had more of a punch to them. But whatever, Sin City light is still Sin City and the film still has enough grittiness, nudity and comic book violence to please fans of the ‘R’ rating. I’m saddened that Sin City 2 has tanked the way it has, there’s no real reason for it to be flopping as hard as it has, it’s an entertaining film. Is it that audiences nowadays have become complete softies that can’t take blood and violence in their entertainment? Has society grown only to accept PG-13 films? Whatever, it’s their loss. I hope they enjoy their umpteenth Step Up film.

Rating: 4 out of 5  

   

Hudson Hawk (1991)

Title: Hudson Hawk (1991)

Director: Michael Lehman

Cast: Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello, Andie McDowell, Sarah Bernhard, Richard E. Grant, James Coburn

Sometimes we like a movie even though everybody else thinks its crap, and Hudson Hawk is one of those movies for me. Lambasted by critics when it was first released, Hudson Hawk was deemed “unspeakably awful” by Rolling Stone magazine and “implausible” by AMC Film Critic; to that I say “where’s your sense of humor people?” Yeah it’s silly and over the top, but when was that a sin? Last time I checked there’s room in the universe for films like this; in fact, sometimes it’s exactly what I need to watch. Bruce Willis was part of the group of writers that were responsible for the film; that’s right my friends, Bruce Willis partially concocted the story for this film. The film was such a horrendous flop that Willis never dabbled in the script department of any film ever again. The thing is that I perfectly get what Bruce Willis wanted to convey with Hudson Hawk, I get the vibe, I get the style of comedy, I get the tone of the flick, what I don’t get is why other people don’t find it as entertaining as I do! Really this movie is tons of fun!

Eddie Hawkins a.k.a. ‘Hudson Hawk’ is a master thief who has just gotten out of jail. He’s done his time, it’s over, he’s out. Problem is that he is such a great burglar that the minute he steps out of jail, he is immediately offered an irresistible job to steal a famous work of art from an auction house. The piece? None other than Davinci’s ‘Sforza’. And so the tale unfolds, soon Hudson Hawk learns that the ones who want to steal these famous works of art are the head honchos of a corporation known as Mayflower Industries; a corporation run by two genuine whackos know as Darwin and Minerva Mayflower, a husband and wife duo who want nothing more than to destroy the very economical foundations of society! So once Hudson Hawk realizes what the deal is, of course, he has to stop these two power hungry megalomaniacs.

So Hudson Hawk is the kind of movie that doesn’t really care much for logic and reason, it simply wants to be fast paced, tell a couple of jokes and one liners along the way, maybe put a smile on your face and finally entertain ya. This isn’t Shakespeare and it never tries to be; this is a heist movie tinted with a little bit of adventure and  sprayed with a little bit of gangster film shenanigans for good measure. You see, Hudson Hawks best buddy is a guy called Tommy Five Tone, the owner of a bar where gangster go to talk shop, eat and drink. Cool part is that Tommy Five Tone is played by Danny Aiello and what says “gangster movie” more than Danny Aiello right? There’s a group of actors out there who always end up in gangster movies because they have that Italian gangster face and Aiello is one of them. So anyways,  Tommy Five Tone runs this bar, but on the side he sometimes organizes a heist or two, and Hudson Hawk is his right hand man. Here’s an element of the film that lets you know how lighthearted it is: Tommy and Hawk pull off their heists while singing Bing Crosby and Paul Anka songs! They actually time their heists to however long the song lasts. The chemistry between these two characters is one of the elements that keeps the movie entertaining, the one liners, the jokes, the funny back and forth. Listen carefully; the subtle word play is hilarious on this one. I mean, one of the crime families in the film is named The Mario Brothers! 

Calling this movie implausible, as a critic called it is simply stupid, because plausibility is not something I look for in a movie like Hudson Hawk, in fact, in this kind of tongue in cheek movie, plausibility is the last thing on the list. On this kind of movie you get the complete opposite, which is why I enjoy the elements in Hudson Hawks that border on fantasy, I like the over the topness. I like seeing Willis pulling off a heist while singing ‘Swinging on a Star’. I like how the fights and the action where pulled off in a cartoonish fashion, it at times feels like you’re watching a Three Stooges short. And speaking of over the top, out of all the performances, Sara Bernhard’s ‘Minerva Mayflower’ stands out as the most over the top character of all! Bernhard has been a comedian for many years, even performing to sell out crowds in Broadway. I remember her the most from her role in Martin Scorsese’s  The King of Comedy (1983), a film in which she played opposite Robert DeNiro and Jerry Lewis. On this one she is loud, intimidating and larger than life. It is obvious she relished playing the lead villain. As a suggestion, if you feel like checking out the special features, check out this really funny featurette in which Bernhard explains how she loved playing Minerva, its hilarious!

The film was directed by Michael Lehmann, the same director behind such films as Heathers (1988) Airheads (1994) and Meet The Applegates (1990), here he does a good job, in my opinion the film has slick production values, they even shot some scenes in Rome which was pretty cool. Unfortunately for Lehman, Hudson Hawk was shot down from the skies, it was a bomb, probably because it was a very misunderstood film. It was marketed as an action adventure film, and so people were probably expecting something along the lines of what they’d seen Willis successfully pull off in Die Hard (1988) and Die Hard 2 (1990) and so that probably caught people off guard. They weren’t expecting a goofy, cartoonish action/comedy, heist movie, they wanted more of John McClain! Instead they got John McClain via The Three Stooges, not a bad combo if you forget all about expectations!   

Just how cartoonish was this film you ask? Well, during some of the fights you’ll hear cartoon sounds, just like you’d hear in those old Warner Bros. cartoons that’s how cartoonish this movie was! The fights? Very slapstick in nature, usually, the main characters will be in peril, but everything turns out good in the end, it’s that kind of movie. I say that if they had marketed the film for what it was, it wouldn’t have disappointed audiences and it might have had a chance. When released in theaters, it was marketed with the tagline “Catch the Adventure, Catch the Excitement, Catch the Hawk!” which suggests it’s a full blown action flick. Yet, after the film tanked, they switched the word “Adventure” for “Laughter” for the films Home Video release, but by then it was too late. My take on it is that audiences don’t like to be lied too. I’ve seen this happen with many other movies, the first one that comes to mind is Nicholas Cage’s Vampires Kiss (1989) which was marketed as a comedy, but was actually a dark, weird film. Lesson for Hollywood: don’t lie to your audience just to get their butts in the theater, your film will suffer for it. Now here’s The Film Connoisseur telling it like it is, now you know what kind of movie Hudson Hawk is, go check it out, you’ll more than likely have a good time.

Rating:  3 ½ out of 5

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)

Title: G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)

Director: Jon M. Chu

Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Dwayne Johnson, Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum, Ray Park, Byung Hung Lee, RZA

Review: 

G.I. Joe Retaliation is a film I watched with some trepidation because of how the studio got cold feet last summer and took the film off their summer roster. That’s right, Paramount Pictures and MGM spent a couple of millions promoting this sequel as a summer 2012 release then felt unsure about the film, yanked it out of its release date and shifted it to May 2013, almost a whole year after it was made; their reasons? Supposedly they wanted to amp up the effects and convert the thing to 3D. Me? I think they were fixing a couple of things here and there that they didn’t like about the film. Maybe they felt they had a lackluster film and decided to add a scene or two, just to make things flow a little better? Studios do these re-shoots all the time; they are fine by me as long as the end result is worth it. So, was the whole damn thing worth it? Did the studios course of action with this film work?

G.I. Joe Retaliation is about Cobra Commander breaking out of a super high tech underground prison and attempting, yet again, to “rule the world”. How does he plan to achieve this? By kidnapping the president and placing one of his loyal servants known as ‘Zartan’ (master of disguise) in his place. You see, Zartan can morph and look exactly like the president, so without America knowing it, they have a member of Cobra ruling the nation. And soon, at the right time, Cobra will take over! But how will he hold the world at ransom? And how can a disbanded G.I. Joe team stop him from achieving his world dominating goals?

So yeah, I wasn’t all that excited for this movie, in fact, I wasn’t planning on seeing it in theaters, because in my book, when a studio gets cold feet with a movie the way they did with this one, it raises a red flag for me immediately. It means the studio didn’t have faith in their product and thought it would fail if released. But then something happened. The film was released and it shot straight to the first spot at the box office! Reviews were saying “it wasn’t all that bad” and that it surpassed the first one, which wasn’t all that difficult considering how lackluster the first one was; making a better film wasn't a tough task. The real task was giving this one that G.I. Joe feel, something that I felt the original lacked, yet this one has in spades. The term used to describe a film like this one amongst film reviewers is “fluff”, which basically means it’s not an important film, it’s the kind of film you watch, are entertained by and then quickly forget because it doesn’t make a lasting impression on you. I personally think this is exactly the kind of film Retaliation is; pure and simple fluff, but that isn’t a bad thing if that’s what you know you’re going to see.  I knew this was what I was in for, so I just went with the flow. Did I end up having a good time?  Hells yeah. I mean, as everyone is saying, it is way better then the first. It isn’t as jokey, it’s tone is slightly more realistic, but I stress the “slightly”; the film is still very much a comic book film.

First the good points: this film feels like G.I. Joe movie, the vehicles they use in the film were apparently really based on the toys because I recognized a lot of them from my pre-teen years, back when I collected G.I. Joe toys with a vengeance. I was one of these kids who had a bunch of jets and tanks and Joes, and placed them in a bunch of positions, by the end of the day I’d have this big ass war going on, ha, the memories. But yeah, this movie will have you getting a couple of flashbacks if you were a hardcore Joe fan. Coolest part about the whole movie is that Cobra finally looks like freaking Cobra! I loved that about it. Cobra Commander looked so freaking cool with his mirror surface helmet. The voice, the wardrobe all screamed classic Cobra Commander. There are moments where Cobra is looking over his empire  that are too cool for school. On the downside, we didn’t get enough of Cobra; I wanted more of the guy! Instead we get Jonathan Pryce playing Zartan; he’s the villain for most of the picture, I wanted more Cobra!  

How cool does Cobra look?

Also on the downside of things, they treated so many characters like crap. I mean, all the Joes from the first film simply disappear or die, and we’re left with a rag tag bunch of Joes. I loved the addition of Dwayne Johnson into the whole G.I. Joe universe, but I hated the fact that for example they disposed so easily of ‘Destro’ one of the coolest villains that the Cobra’s count with. And where the hell was The Baroness? She was never even spoken of! But whatever, this is a comic book movie and things like this are bound to happen. I’m sure what happened was that the actors simply didn’t want to return to a movie they thought would end up being crap, I bet they all wish they had returned now! I’m sure they will return for a third entry, especially when we take in consideration how successful this film has turned out to be; nobody likes to say no to a blockbuster. Dwayne Johnson fits perfectly in this film, but they also decided to add Bruce Willis as ‘the original Joe’ but he ends up doing the same thing he’s being doing in most movies he is in now, smirking, shooting machine guns and saying one liners.

I enjoyed the fact that thematically speaking the film isn’t entirely hollow, actually, the story touches upon old fears that have, in an interesting turn of events, suddenly re-emerged in the world. I’m talking about nuclear paranoia; memories of the Cold War flashing on everbodies minds, countries threatening to blow each other away. Suddenly we got North Korea threatening to blow the world to smithereens with its nuclear weapons, and the whole world seems to be entering into some sort of cold war yet again. I guess governments want to amp up that all important fear factor in the world, some world leaders like to get cocky and show they are the biggest and baddest. So anyhow, there’s a cool moment in the film where many of the world’s rulers meet in one room to discuss the fate of the world and for a moment it seems like the world will be blown to shreds. I liked that contemporary theme, it rang true. Actually, those scenes had some people giggling in the theater, myself included, the whole idea of these crazy dudes shooting nuclear weapons at each other is so contemporary, so right of the moment. It brought to mind Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb (1964). The film points out, in the midst of all its comic book hijinks that the fate of the world lies in the hands of a couple of power hungry nutcases, it’s kind of scary when you think about it.

This new film is stylish, and has a couple of really cool action moments, like for example there’s this whole sequence where Snake Eyes has to escape a temple that’s up in some icy mountains, and he has to rappel the hell out of there, and so suddenly we get this really cool sequence with Ninjas fighting while rappelling down a mountain, which was too cool for school. I mean, the filmmakers themselves even ended the scene by cutting to another scene with people clapping as if giving themselves a pat on the back for the whole thing. Retaliation switches from huge action sequences to political intrigue scenes and it's all very entertaining in my book, it worked. Seeing power hungry politicians pressing red buttons is always entertaining! Even the idea gets me on the edge of my seat, G.I. Joe: Retaliation plays with all these fears that humanity must be feeling as I type this.  Retaliation was directed by a guy called Jon M. Chu, the guy responsible for bringing us such masterpieces as Step Up 2: The Streets (2008) and Step Up 3D (2010); I guess those films made enough money at the box office that he was given the chance to make this one, and that’s cool by me, he showed he could pull off an effects heavy film. Lucky for him that Retaliation has made so much money because a third film in the franchise has been greenlit, something tells me it will be bigger and better. Hopefully the series will continue its steady rise in quality. It might be fluff, but it’s fun fluff.

Rating: 4 out of 5