Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins Parent Guide

As a child, Snake Eyes (Henry Golding) witnessed his father’s murder, a tragedy that left him burning for revenge. With no name, no past, and no allegiances, he’s little more than an itinerant street fighter until Kenta (Takehiro Hira), a dangerous Yakuza (Japanese mob) boss, offers him what he wants most in the world: A way to find the man who killed his father. All Snake Eyes has to do is infiltrate the Arishikage, an elite clan of ninjas, dedicated to preserving and protecting the world. But once Snake Eyes finds the clan, his loyalty is tested – and what’s more, he begins to question his thirst for vengeance.

At just over two hours, watching this movie takes somewhere between a geological age and eternity. I knew I was in trouble when I checked my phone, fully expecting to be an hour in, only to find that I had made it all of twenty minutes. No amount of frenetic action or inscrutable-philosophy-focused ninja training can compensate for the fact that I walked out of that theatre feeling jet lagged. This movie drags so badly that my brain is still in a different time zone.

Look, I like dumb action fun as much as the next guy. You’re looking at a man who will tell anyone either willing to listen (or unable to escape) how good Godzilla: King of the Monsters is. And that movie has the only recorded use of a nuclear bomb as a medical device. So when I tell you that Snake Eyes is too stupid to be watchable by anyone who has graduated middle school, that should give you some idea of the problems plaguing this experiment in toy advertising. There isn’t a cliché in the book that Snake Eyes doesn’t gleefully present with complete sincerity. It’s sort of like watching someone vomit the worst scenes from every action film in the last twenty years in front of a projector.

Snake Eyes is more or less geared to a teen demographic or to adults who desperately want to avoid any kind of sustained, serious thought. The action cinematography is so shaky that most of the violence is sort of inferred between blurred frames. There’s also remarkably little profanity and no sexual content to speak of, both of which are unusual in big action slams. Unfortunately, there’s almost no reason to watch this latest installment in what was, at best, a tepid franchise. G.I. Joe is one of those properties that we’ve mercilessly dragged out of the eighties just for some soulless studio to prostitute it for any lingering nostalgia you have. Perhaps it would be kinder to take it out behind the shed and bury it – after what this movie put me through, I’m still debating whether or not to do it the kindness of shooting it first.