KYMM'S 365 DAY MOVIE CHALLENGE #23: SNAKE EYES (2021, dir by Robert Schwentke, USA)

“For six hundred years our ninja have brought peace to the world. But times have changed. I need Warriors like you to become the future of the clan. Join us. This is your destiny.”

When I first saw the trailer for this I was like, “This looks great! This looks terrible exciting! I love any movie where someone says portentously, ‘For SIX HUNDRED YEARS our ninja have brought peace to the world…’ Wait, it’s a G.I. Joe movie?”

I do not know from G.I. Joe beyond the 1970s version, which were these great dolls that I coveted because they came with so many accessories. Then there was the cartoon that I never watched, then there were the movies that I never watched, and now there is Snake Eyes, which I was going to watch because of that great trailer.

And you know what? It was pretty good!

I mean, it’s not great, and there are a couple of iffy performances, but it’s a fun way to spend a Saturday morning at the AMC. Twenty years ago, a man and his son are staying at a safe house, which isn’t so safe, because the bad guys find them. The man is told to roll the dice to have fate choose if he lives or dies, and he rolls snake eyes. I mean, that wasn’t hard to guess. It’s kind of hinted at in the title. The man is killed, the boy escapes, growing up to be Henry Golding, who fights illegal bare-knuckle brawls and calls himself Snake Eyes.

He is approached by Evil Yakuza Dude, Kenta (Takehiro Hira), who is 100% all the way the best actor in the film, to come work for him because he can find out who killed Snake’s dad. Snake agrees, because the only thing he wants in the wide world is to find that guy and kill him. Also working for Kenta is a guy named Tommy (Andrew Koji), who, it turns out, is actually working undercover and is Kenya’s cousin from the non-evil side of the family. Snake is told to kill Tommy, but he doesn’t, and instead he and Tommy take out the whole local Yakuza gang (not Kenta, of course), and escape back to Tommy’s clan’s house back in Japan. It’s kind of Crazy Rich Asians II, but with Henry Golding playing the poor person entering this world and with more swords.

Tommy’s clan is very rich and powerful and good and shining, and Tommy wants Snake to be a part of it. Akiko (Hakira Abe) is the head of security, and she doesn’t trust this LA street rat as far as she can throw him, which is actually pretty far, so the analogy isn’t quite sound in this case.

The movie is sometimes dumb and silly, and is mostly normal and then there are cgi monsters, and you are like, what just happened? Also, this is the kind of film where a guy is given a sword for the first time and then is an incredible sword master not half an hour later. More annoyingly, it’s also the kind of movie where the tough woman goes all gooey over the lead for no reason except that the script told her to. I did NOT like that part. Though I liked her character besides that.

Some of the performances were on the iffy side, apparently someone told Andrew Koji to lower his chin and look up through his eyebrows and say every line with the intensity of a man saying “For SIX HUNDRED YEARS our ninja have brought peace to the world…” even if he happened to be saying, “I’ll have the ten piece McNuggets, large, with a Coke and sweet and sour sauce, please, and a strawberry creme pie.” He doesn’t say that, there is no scene in a McDonald’s drive-thru, but if there were, there would be much chin lowering intensity.

There is also a very mediocre actress who is Hugo Weaving’s niece and proves that acting ability doesn’t flow through bloodlines, but she isn’t in much of the film, so it’s fine. The fights are fun, the story is exciting, I thought it was just fine. I could tell what was supposed to be important from the way the camera and lights dazzled pointedly at some random item, like a costume that was brought out in as stately a fashion as the Crown Jewels, and I’m like, “I guess that’s an iconic outfit of some kind!” It didn’t matter that I didn’t know from G.I. Joe, though I kind of vaguely knew that it wasn’t a guy so much as a Group, a Fighting Force, known, hilariously, as The Joes. Watching these actors straight-facedly discuss The Joes is worth the price of admission, 100%, along with Takehiro Hira’s making a glorious meal of the scenery. Chef’s kiss to him.

Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog