Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins (2021)

Written by CinemaSerf on March 28, 2022

It's one thing offering us Henry Golding as a pretty chap you'd want to take home to meet your mother, it's quite another telling him to abstain from shaving for a few days and hope that turns him into a convincing, highly trained ninja! That's what is in store for us here as this latest GI Joe spin off presents our hero as the rescuer of the heir of an ancient Japanese clan - "Tommy" (Andrew Koji). Once he is thoroughly ingratiated with this noble family, it transpires that old "Snake Eyes" has an agenda all of his own - and it's not exactly honourable! The rest of the film follows a well trodden path of suspicion, betrayal, reconciliation and - of course - loads of epic looking sword fighting and gravity-defying action scenes. As with so many films in this genre, way too much emphasis has been placed on the look of the thing - the characters are instantly forgettable, the plot thinner than any rice paper could ever hope to be and the ending dragged this, quite unnecessarily, over the two hour mark. It needs a big screen to do the photography and visuals justice, but maybe just pay daytime rates?