DVD Release Date:  November 3, 2009
Theatrical Release Date:  August 7, 2009
Rating:  PG-13 (for strong sequences of action violence and mayhem throughout)
Genre:  Action
Run Time:  118 min.
Director:  Stephen Sommers
Actors:  Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayans, Byung-hun Lee, Dennis Quaid, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sienna Miller, Said Taghmaoui, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbage, Ray Park, Jonathan Pryce

It's not unusual for critics to complain that big-budget action films focus on, well, action at the expense of character development, but each summer the bar is lowered further. The answer for the critic is to either lower his expectations, or take the predictable barbs sure to come his way when he complains, for the umpteenth time, that a certain film has compensated for a lack of interesting characters by focusing almost exclusively on screen spectacle.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, directed by Stephen Sommers (The Mummy), is the latest case in point. Its reported $175 million budget can be seen up on the screen—some of the film's special effects, while not advancing the art, are effectively eye-catching—but viewers are left with a story that feels half-formed at best. Apparently not much of that $175 million went to the screenwriters.

James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston) has developed the world's first nanotech warheads. Not only will the weapons cause destruction upon initial impact, but the materials in the weaponry will then spread out, devouring and destroying everything in their path.

McCullen chooses Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) to transport his weapons safely to the U.S. government, but the team comes under attack from Ana (Sienna Miller), Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) and a group of super villains. The weapons fall into the bad guys' hands and several of the good guys die, but Duke and Ripcord are saved by Gen. Hawk (Dennis Quaid) and his international G.I. Joe team. Hawk recruits Duke and Ripcord to help regain control of the warheads before they can destroy Paris, Moscow, Beijing and Washington, D.C.

The pursuit will involve the destruction of the Eiffel Tower, lots of car chases, tremendous explosions and some speedy underwater vessels called "sharks" that, in their plastic, retail-ready form, are surely already flying off toy-store shelves. For G.I. Joe is, if nothing else, the start of a big-screen franchise that will sell lots of merchandise for Hasbro, which launched the toy line decades ago. (G.I. Joe comics, dolls and a TV cartoon show were popular among earlier generations, but this is the first live-action big-screen treatment based on the products.)