Snake Eyes Review

Snake Eyes is about the origins of, one of the most popular, if not, the most popular character of the GI Joe franchise, in the movie we get to join Henry Golding bring the character of Snake Eyes to life and follow him on his journey from his traumatic childhood to him becoming and learning to home his skills as a fighter, martial artist, and soldier.

Throughout the movie, we’ll see many origin stories for characters such as Storm Shadow played by the incredible Andrew Koji, and meet Scarlett from GI Joe and many members of Cobra and many of Snake Eyes allies eventually team with in the future.

Overview

The movie instantly gets right into the backstory of Snake Eyes, we get to see the traumatic incident which has plagued him for his entire life, we skip ahead in time to see Snake Eyes fighting in an underground fight as well as working in a fish factory. This is when we get introduced to Storm Shadow, the two fight their way out of the building and make their way back home to Japan where Storm Shadow asks Snake Eyes to join him and do the 3 challenges.

This is such a great start to the movie, as many people who don’t know the lore or story of Snake Eyes, can come into this movie and instantly get a feel of the tone and the motivation behind Snake Eyes. So far, the action, in the beginning, has been incredible, the story has also been fairly decent.

While many films of this caliber normally would rush to get the main character to where he needs to be, Snake Eyes proves that a slow pace will do the trick, as we get to see this play out in front of us, Snake Eyes doesn’t just rush into being the character we all know him to be, we get to see him go through the challenges, earn the right, and eventually become the character we know.

The great and well-choreographed action continues throughout the film, with each fight and action sequence being a step up from the previous one. Each character had different styles of fighting, you could tell that by how Snake Eyes fought to how well and organized Storm Shadow fought throughout the movie.

Throughout the movie, the head of security doesn’t trust Snake Eyes, not one bit. She knows something is up with him, Snake Eyes narrowly manages to convince her he’s on her side, and that he’s truly after his father’s killer. You can see this playing on his mind, the lies, the secrets, and the sneaking about, you can tell that this is playing a major burden for him.

I loved that we saw the defining moment where Snake Eyes chooses not to kill the man who murdered his father, he debated it but ultimately this was the beginning where he thought “I’ve made a mistake”, and he goes to fix it. This was such a huge moment for the character.

The end of the movie saw Storm Shadow denounce his family and clan, and go off alone, his origin as Snake Eyes’ greatest enemy. Andrew Koji was the perfect choice for Storm Shadow. As a parting gift, Snake Eyes receives his suit and finds out his father was a GI agent.

Story

First things first, the story was actually really decent, over the past few days I’ve seen many tweets about the story being bad, however, as a casual fan and ultimately a fan of swords, Japan, and ninja culture, this movie was right up my ally.

The story was filled right from the beginning with action, it had a great pace leading up to each fight and action sequence, the story didn’t just rush and dive straight into the lore of Snake Eyes, it didn’t have him established already and this was a pretty decent origin movie.

Each character that was introduced throughout the movie, essentially killed what they were cast for, each member actually portrayed their characters really well and I was surprised at just how well they were portrayed. Each character’s design was also unique to them.

I won’t lie, I really enjoyed the story for this movie, although I did notice some dislikes with the story, lack of character scenes, introduced a character or two, a little bit too late into the movie, although while it is a dislike, I’m fine with it, I was here for Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow.

Characters

What can I say about the characters throughout the movie? They were literally PERFECTION. Like I said, each character that was introduced had a story, a unique design, and some great moments to shine throughout the final battle, definitely, the standout characters were Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, as well as Akiko the head of security.

Henry Golding as Snake Eyes was a different casting as this was his first action movie, and I have to say, he absolutely smashed the role, especially for a high-profile character like Snake Eyes, especially with it being his “origin” story. He was the perfect fit for the role.

Andrew Koji as Tommy (Storm Shadow), I was a fan of Andrew Koji before Snake Eyes, I became a fan when I binge-watched Warrior, now I’m even more of a fan and I hope that we see Andrew reprise the role as Storm Shadow in the future, he was really great in this movie.

I was a little bit disappointed in how much Samara Weaving and Ursula Corbero were in the movie, the two characters Scarlett (Weaving) and Baroness (Corbero) was great background characters that could have had more of a presence in the movie.

For the full cast list, you can visit IMDB by clicking here.

Hype

Was it worth the hype? For me personally, I got really excited after seeing the first trailer, I loved the character of Snake Eyes in the previous GI Joe movies, so an origin movie focused on Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow was a must-see movie, but does it live up to the hype? Yes.

Is it the movie of the year? No, it’s not, but it is a great movie nonetheless, it’s fun, action-packed, and a story derivative movie. The action was insane and highly choreographed and the sword fighting went flawlessly. It was hands down some of the best sword fighting in a movie in a while.

Favorite Moments

My favorite moments were anything involving Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes, each scene they were in, was great, especially if it was those two fighting, there were multiple scenes in where the duo took on 10+ bad guys and amazing chemistry between the two.

one of my favorite scenes came just after Snake Eyes got expelled from the clan and he snuck his way into the clan’s compound to steal the jewel for Kenta, it truly showcased just how stealthy Snake Eyes is, and then this is when we begin to see Snake Eyes turn into the character we all love. It was great.

Dislikes

As I mentioned earlier, a couple of characters were introduced a bit late in the movie, Baroness was introduced halfway into the movie, I initially thought “Ok that’s fair, she’s the villain”, no, she wasn’t, she appeared halfway through the movie and then decided to join Snake Eyes to takedown Kenta.

Another character that was introduced extremely late was Scarlett, she came towards the end, pretty much just appeared, and took down a few guys and told Snake Eyes about his father’s history and that Snake Eyes could make a great GI Joe.

Another major dislike was that Snake Eyes received the suit he wears, at the end of the movie, I get that this is basically setting up a sequel, but I would have just loved to see his rock the suit a bit earlier in the movie, even for the final battle.

Recommend?

Would I recommend Snake Eyes? Yes, yes I would. For any GI Joe fan, this is a movie for you, it’s the origin of a fan-favorite character and well as a fan-favorite villain in Storm Shadow. For any action movie fan, this is a perfect film for you, it’s literally action-packed from the get-go.

Verdict

Snake Eyes is fun, action-packed, and entertaining. It had everything to set up a sequel. Henry Golding and Andrew Koji were the stars of the movie, they killed it in every scene, Ursula Corbero and Samara Weaving were underused and I hope to see the two return in a future movie. Overall not the perfect movie, but it was great.

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Rating 9.1/10

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Snake Eyes is available in cinemas worldwide now!