[Review] Snake Eyes (4.5/10)

 

Title - Snake Eyes
Studio - Paramount Studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Skydance Media
Starring - Henry Golding, Andrew Koji, Haruka Abe, Takehiro Hira, Iko Uwais, Peter Mensah, Ursula Corbero, Samara Weaving
Writer - Evan Spiliotopoulos, Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse
Director - Robert Schwentke
Release - 23 July 2021

I did not get to watch this in the cinemas due to the current cinema shut-down, and I'm guessing that's why I was not as affected by the shaky camera problem. But I can imagine how bad this would have been on a gigantic screen.

There were a lot of problems in this one, mainly in the writing. The drama surrounding Snake Eyes himself, I thought was quite good actually. He was fueled by vengeance and that set him on his path. And the friendship with and inevitable betrayal to Andrew Koji was also quite the good drama. 

But this wasn't really a Snake Eyes movie, was it? Sure, for this version the producers wanted to keep Golding's good looks instead of his skin getting burned off with damaged vocal chords. Sure, his father was a G. I. Joe that he did not know about. But at the core of his character, he is supposed to be a ninja.

After watching this, he never became one. His training did not really involve any ninjitsu. Heck, we never even see much of any ninja action. A lot of the action was at the Arashikage base where it's supposed to be a ninja clan, and we didn't even see any significant ninja.

The action in this was disappointing. There was never any good choreography, though Andrew Koji, of course, sold his action sequences well. Other than that, nothing was memorable. We probably saw all the good stuff in the trailers already (just like the end shot and the mid-credit scene were also in the trailers).

Also, this movie should have never gone mystical. The snakes were a terrible idea (so was the second test), but the worst one was that ridiculous stone. I don't get why Takehiro Hira's character couldn't just kill everyone once he got that because it was that powerful.

And there were so many bad scenes as well. Where Snake Eyes ended up at the end was ridiculous. He should have been put to death by the Arashikage and yet he was gifted his signature suit, even with the Arashikage brand on it. 

Here's another scene that was way up there as "bad". In the final battle when the group came together in a "walk on", Samara Weaving's Scarlett joined the group and then Snake Eyes walked up to her and whispered "Yo Joe". Why would he do that? If you want to shoehorn that in, why not let Scarlett do it. And it should have been an empathetic battle cry, not something you whisper. This is not Captain America at the end of a 20-movies buildup.