I really enjoyed this film. I too was hesitant when I found out that Sommers was the director, but my concerns were for not.
Sommers took concepts from both the comics and cartoon series and molded a truly interesting G.I.Joe story.
The Snake Eye's/Storm Shadow story was excellently presented through a series of flashbacks while the Doctor/Baroness/Duke triangle really added a lot to the motivation of the characters which went miles for me. Suddenly these were not all one dimensional characters, but characters with reasons for doing what they did. Great stuff.
Arnold Vosloo's fun preformance as Zartan really stood out for me. He was set up perfectly, callously murdered Cover Girl and became an integral part of the overall plot despite vanishing for most of the second half of the film.(His return in the last scene is priceless
)
This movie actually ends with something of a cliffhanger, something most franchise movies don't have the courage to do. I commend Sommer's for that and sincerely hope he gets to make at least the one sequel.
I even like Storm Shadow's demise at the hands of Snake Eyes. It was needed to give the heroes more of a feeling of victory. In all honesty the good guys don't really win in this film, nor do they lose.
It struck an excellent balance between portraying both G.I.Joe and Cobra as extremely effective. Cobra wins a lot despite G.I.Joe winning as well. It wasn't a constant good guys making the bad guys look lame style of story.
Both Baroness and Scarlett as the female leads were excellent, big parts of the story. A lot more than the meaningless eye candy we often see in these types of films. Malon Wayan's was even decent and a lot more than just comic relief. Breaker had a nice role as well.
In fact the only character in the film that seemed constantly unimportant was Heavy Duty. He spend most the time just driving stuff...I was waiting for Miss Daisy to show up in the back of one of his vehicles
All in all its the best popcorn flick of the summer that I've seen. Way superior to Star Trek, Wolverine and Transformers.(I've yet to see Terminator). Thumbs way up for me.
