... this time from movie blogger extraordinaire, Atomic Gadfly. His review was originally posted on his site: http://atomicgadfly.blogspot.com/ and was so dead on, we wanted to promote it here. Enjoy.

Review:

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, a movie that's sure to make Tropic Thunder look like Platoon, is set to open on August 7. But the real G.I. Joe movie of 2009 made its broadcast debut Saturday on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim . That's G.I. Joe: Resolute, and you can watch it here.

Resolute is widely regarded as the Hasbo toy company's apology to Joe fans for the disaster coming this summer, and it's everything Rise of Cobra will not be. In other words, Resolute is a serious military-action drama that respects the source material. Hasbro even brought in comics rockstar Warren Ellis to handle the writing chores.

Unfortunately, Ellis isn't at the top of his game here. Resolute comes with the standard bad-guy-with-doomsday-weapon-holds-the-world-hostage plot we've seen countless times before, including in Joe cartoons of years past (as opposed to the comics, where the plans of the evil Cobra organization were generally less fantastical). I was hoping for something more creative, story-wise. Maybe something reflecting post-9/11 reality.

Although the plot is simple, Cobra's doomsday weapon, itself, is pretty convoluted. Something about giant balloons, the HAARP relay, and a "particle cannon." So there's a lot of awkward, clunky dialogue to explain how it all works. And the bad dialogue isn't helped any by some truly terrible voice acting. The Cobra ninja Storm Shadow, in particular, sounds like Keye Luke in Gremlins. ("You teach him to watch television. Ay-yah!")

On the other hand, the Cobra arms dealer Destro sounds just like Sean Connery, which is perfect. Well, he is supposed to be Scottish, after all!

Destro and a couple of the other Cobra big guns show up just long enough to get captured or killed. They're completely ineffectual. As for Storm Shadow, a lot of Resolute's brief running time (sixty minutes without commercials!) is devoted to the ninja's vendetta against the G.I. Joe team's resident commando badass, Snake Eyes. The conflict between those two is one of the central narratives in the Joe mythology, but with millions dead at Cobra's hands and the fate of the entire world in the balance, it doesn't make much sense to devote nearly half the movie to what is essentially a private grudge match. It's a lengthy digression the story can't afford.

The ninja showdown plays out exactly like the ending to Kill Bill - and the dozens of kung-fu movies to which that film paid homage. I can't say it isn't well-done, but it feels out of place here, like it belongs in one of the anime programs on the Adult Swim lineup. Worst of all, the supernatural powers demonstrated by the two ninjas ruins any credibility the scene might have. (That sort of "ninja magic" has long been a bane of true Joe fans.) A lot of the military action in Resolute is just as unconvincing. There are far too many shots of people standing out in the open, firing machine guns at each other at close range, with no one getting hit. By the time I saw Snake Eyes single-handedly take out half the Cobra army, during the anticlimatic finale, the movie had about as much suspense as a Coyote-Road Runner cartoon.

Finally, there's the Cobra Commander, my favorite character in the G.I. Joe franchise. In the comics, he's a ruthless terrorist mastermind, but in the cartoons (and, therefore, in the minds of most people), he's a lisping buffoon. Ellis tries to have it both ways - to make the Commander seem like a credible villain while also making him recognizable to those who know him only from cartoons or Robot Chicken parodies. The Commander starts off sort of creepy, but reverts to type by the end. I really wanted to love this version of the Commander, but I just found him underwhelming.

Since Resolute is an animated film, I should say something about the way it looks. The style is "Americanized" anime, which I'm normally not crazy about. But it suits this story and these characters well. Most of the Joes and Cobras have been retooled slightly, but each still has the unique look of his or her classic design. In other words, they all look like themselves, not like the B-movie versions of the X-Men we'll see in Rise of Cobra in a few months.

I've told you what I think is wrong with Resolute. Now I'm going to tell you the most important thing the movie got right - the tone. Like I said, Resolute's a serious military-action drama. It's not a spoof or a camp comedy like what's coming in August. While I may have issues with some of the decisions Warren Ellis made as a writer, the fact is that he gets G.I. Joe in a way that the hacks bringing us Rise of Cobra do not. Resolute is far from perfect, but it's the best filmed version of this property we've seen yet. I have no doubt that this hour-long cartoon will surpass the big-budget, live-action Rise of Cobra in store for us this summer.