"Yo Joe!" said a little voice inside my brain for the umpteenth time since I walked in for this flick. For, those of us who grew up with the Joes just closed our eyes and said a silent prayer for our childhood friends.
Policeman Chris Morgan can't make it on his cop's salary, so in the evenings he drives a taxi to get some extra cash. Wonder what the NYPD will have to say about that. But doesn't matter what they do, as we don't get to hear any of that, thanks to the frequently exploding vehicles and the perennial wail of a blues singer, Kari.
Following a freak meeting with the cop, she suddenly resurfaces during one of his murder investigations. After which she, painfully, becomes a permanent feature of the film, hanging around our hero cop as he blasts his way through whatever mystery the plot just about begins to build.
Director Stu lands himself in a soup trying to infuse the GI Joe image into a character who looks more dumb than his pet Labrador. Brazenly lifted off various adventures of the legendary series, the events, leading to a pointless climax, leave you thinking that even Black Shadow (the nemesis of the Joes) could not have imagined a worse revenge on the Joes than this joint effort by our cop-hero and his director.
All said, one has to admit that the action scenes have been surprisingly well-shot and the hi-tech wizardry of fancy gizmos, so typical of the original series, is what makes it possible to sit throughout this otherwise banal flick.
But the violence has been badly overplayed, with a few too many vehicles ending in balls of fire as our hero fights to overcome the baddies, who are plotting to humiliate the nation. But all he, and this film, does achieve is drive the final nail into the coffin of this, once very popular, show.
Mission accomplished. Yo Joe!