Snake Eyes - SPOILER movie review

I liked the trailer for "Snake Eyes", and I've liked Henry Golding in everything I've seen him in so far ("Crazy Rich Asians", "Last Christmas" and "A Simple Favor"), so I was interested in seeing the film.

And since I saw the film this past Thursday, I'm pissed off that they've basically made it so that I won't watch any more films in this series.

I don't know much about the G.I. Joe franchise, other than that I know they were a bunch of toys. I watched the two films they've released so far, and while I think I liked them, I don't remember anything about them or even who was in them. So going into this film, I knew nothing other than that the film was labeled as a G.I. Joe original story.

Generally, I thought the film was interesting. For the most part, I liked the story. From the set-up, you knew that the rest of the story was going to revolve around him seeking revenge on the man who killed his father. I liked the twists in the story, not knowing who he was working for, not knowing whose side he was on, being surprised (I was at least) when it was revealed that he was a spy for the other side because he'd been promised information leading to the man who'd killed his father. I really liked the set-up of the warring factions between the yakuza and the ninja, and the relationship between the two.

I was on board with the film this entire time.

Until they got to the third challenge for Snake Eyes. Because he was keeping the secret that he was working for Kenta, a bigwig in the yakuza, while pretending to be loyal to Tommy and the ninja clan, he did not have a pure heart, and the snakes would kill anyone who was hiding anything unclean in their heart. Snake Eyes was about to be killed for his deception when Akiko, the bad-ass head of security for the clan, decided to save him and allow him to escape unharmed. Of course, the bad-ass female head of security had to betray the oath she swore to the clan who adopted her, when she had no family before, because of her feelings for a man.

What incredibly lazy and infuriating writing. They couldn't find ANY reason for him to get out of that without completely ruining Akiko's character and integrity? We have to go back to the old, tired, overused trope that a woman will throw away EVERYTHING because of her feelings, no matter how minor, for a man? She gave this whole speech about her loyalty to the clan and what they mean to her, but she's willing to sacrifice all of that for him, a man she barely knows? And from then on, he goes on to do all kinds of stuff to "redeem" himself and make him seemingly worthy to be a Joe, but he only has that opportunity because of HER. He should have died. He wasn't worthy to survive the third challenge. He did nothing to deserve it. He got a second chance that he didn't earn. Everything else he ever does is tainted by the fact that HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN DEAD INSTEAD. There wasn't some way to write it so that he at least had a hand in his own save from the snakes, so that there was SOMETHING that he did that contributed to him being spared by them or escaping from them?

One other thing I didn't like about the film was at the end, when Scarlett was telling Snake Eyes about this father. "He was one of us, a Joe." she tells him. OK. And then she goes on to talk about him like she'd worked with him and how Snake Eyes could totally be a Joe just like his dad. That struck me as being odd because Scarlett didn't seem old enough to have worked with the dad, but she was talking about him in terms like she had, like Snake Eyes measured up to her experience of working with his dad. I would have liked someone older, who reasonably could have known and worked with the dad, to have said all this, or at least have Scarlett clarify that everything she was saying was based on what she'd read and heard about his dad. What she was saying just didn't ring true coming from her.

One other thing that bothered me about the film - while I generally liked the action sequences, the hand-held combat was absolutely nausea-inducing for me. It wasn't just that they often used a hand-held camera, but even in shots where the actors were static for a second during their fight, the camera still had motion on its own. It meant that for many of the fight scenes, I couldn't really watch them because it was starting to make me feel ill, and I really didn't appreciate that. Hand-held cameras are not my preference - God invented dollys for a reason - but I know this is not a complaint that affects most people.

I liked most of the actors in the film. Takehiro Hira was good as Kenta, and I really liked Andrew Koji as Tommy. I'd love to see more of him but that's not going to happen. Other than the writing pissing me off, I really liked Haruka Abe as Akiko, and it probably made me even more irritated, because I really liked her. I liked Iko Uwais as Hard Master and Peter Mensah as Blind Master, and I even liked Ursula Corbero as Baroness, even though she was a little cartoony, but she was fun to watch. I absolutely loved Eri Ishida as Sen, the head of the clan, and if they could figure out a way for her to be the star of a film that focussed on her character, I'd make an exception to not watching another film in this franchise.

I thought Henry Golding was good in this film. I thought this role gave him a little more acting depth to show than the three films I mentioned previously. It gave him the ability to show that he could do more than be the pretty-boy male half of a rom-com. (He didn't really have much to do in "A Simple Favor".) You could see in his eyes and face and demeanor when he realizes that the people truly responsible for his father's death wasn't the man in front of him, but the group that he'd just helped. There's been a lot of talk of the Asian representation because Henry Golding was cast as the lead in a film like this, and I'm all for that. Let's absolutely do that on a more regular basis. But it's completely not required and not necessary and not acceptable to uplift a role played by a male Asian actor by sacrificing the integrity of a role played by a female actor, Asian or otherwise.