Action man loses the plot.

gi joe: the rise of cobra (12a)

HH

TRANSFORMERS toys have produced two hit blockbusters, so naturally Hollywood started looking round for more playthings to turn into movies.

They came up with GI Joe, the American version of Action Man.

Not that that really has any relevance to this film. Instead of focusing on one soldier, GI Joe is the name of an elite fighting unit made up of the world's best military men and women.

Headed by General Hawk (Dennis Quaid), the unit's mission is to retrieve a new type of high-tech warhead which uses nanobots or some such nonsensical science.

The weapons have been stolen by The Baroness (Sienna Miller) and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee), who are working for nasty arms manufacturer McCullen (Christopher Eccleston, hamming it up with an annoying Scottish accent).

Grief-stricken On their tail are the GI Joes - Duke (Channing Tatum), Ripcord (Marlon Wayans), Scarlett (Rachel Nichols) and Snake Eyes (Ray Park).

It turns out Duke used to know The Baroness, back when she was blonde and called Ana. They knew each other so well they were engaged, until he managed to accidentally get her brother Rex (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) killed.

Grief-stricken, she appeared to go over to the dark side.

If this sounds a bit complicated, that's because it is - there are too many characters to keep track of.

But then this type of film isn't aimed at audiences who like to look too deeply into the meaning of movies. They just want to sit back, eat popcorn and enjoy the slick visuals, fighting and explosions.

There's certainly plenty of that. It is pretty violent for its certificate and there are a couple of well-executed action scenes, but I began to find it rather dull.

When the baddies destroy the Eiffel Tower and half of Paris, I couldn't help remembering how that happened in Team America: World Police with puppets, in far more entertaining style.

There are a couple of intentional jokes but far more unintentional ones. I laughed out loud when Ripcord is trying to shoot down a missile in a stolen plane and has to work out the correct voice activation command.

"McCullen is Scottish, let's try Celtic!" says Scarlett. As if that's actually a language (she means Gaelic).

There are plenty of good actors, particularly British ones like Jonathan Pryce, but they're not given much to do. At best, the dialogue is banal.

On the surface it may seem like there's sexual exality in GI Joe, as the women can fight as well as the men. But actually it's pretty sexist, as they also have to fight wearing high heels, heavy make-up and skintight, cleavage-enhancing uniforms.

All the far-fetched gadgets become a little ludicrous and irritating - the characters have a habit of appearing as holograms, so we can't tell who's real and who isn't.

You can see on screen where the pounds 200 million budget has gone. It does look fabulous, but it's a shame some of the money wasn't spent on an exciting story, better script and characters we care about.

Without those, the glossy computer-generated images are ultimately hollow, like the holograms.