I like and wish the best for so many of the principle actors (Andrew Koji is awesome, Henry Golding has chops, Iko Uwais is a legend, and Samara Weaving is great) but the film is pretty poor overall. I didn’t hate the theoretical “flipping the script” on the back story, but it was still so contrived, convoluted and beyond belief. Maybe when you are already dealing with ancient hidden ninja clans and world spanning super-terrorists, bringing in magic rocks and giant truth-saying eternal snakes isn’t off the menu. But if that is the meal I’m being served, I think I will send it back to the chef.
I would have appreciated more of the fight scenes and choreography if I wasn’t distracted by the motives and the “cool” camera angles/shaky hand cam. You have such great athletes and actors, but the scenes come off as sloppy and incoherent. It doesn’t help that the surrounding material is pretty dopey. Our eternally entwined ninja protagonists (Stormshadow and Snake Eyes, which their push to those names is eye-rolling) are given a little more depth, but it also neuters their characters’ growth/turns throughout the runtime.
Honestly, it’s a film based on ninja assassins in the GI Joe universe. You shouldn’t be expecting an award winning meal when Spaghettios is the main ingredient, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle slurping it unheated straight from the can. The poor parts were accentuated and the possibilities with talent and thought wasted.