Snake Eyes review round-up: GI Joe spinoff, starring Henry Golding, is a 'more interesting variety of a boring movie'

The first review of Snake Eyes, a spin-off of G.I. Joe, are now out.

Directed by Robert Schwentke from a script by Evan Spiliotopoulos, the Paramount movie stars Henry Gilding as the titular ninja. An origin story of the titular character, Snake Eyes is a silent ninja commando who dresses in all black, never reveals his face and doesn’t speak. He stands out among the military anti-terrorist group and quickly establishes himself as the group’s most popular member. The movie also stars ith Andrew Koji, Úrsula Corberó, Samara Weaving, and Iko Uwais in supporting roles.

Snake Eyes is slated to release in the US on 23 July. In India, the film will be distributed by Viacom18 Studios.

The movie has received largely unfavourable reviews from critics — while most praised Golding’s performances,  the film itself has been described as “a largely interchangeable hunk of Hollywood product somewhat distinguished by its Asiatic regional particulars.”

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Read some of the reviews of Snake Eyes here

• The Guardian: “The flying fists may make this a relative anomaly for the multiplex release calendar, but that should be understood as the faintest possible praise, an acknowledgment that we’re looking at one of the more interesting varieties of boring movie.”
• The Hollywood Reporter: “As shamelessly corporate popcorn movies go, Snake Eyes is better than most. That’s not high praise, but considering the film’s dopey pedigree, it’s not nothing.”
• Variety: It’s got enough pulsating action-for-its-own-sake that, at moments, it could be a Fast and Furious spinoff… Movies now seem stuck in rerun mode, but the pleasure of Snake Eyes is that it succeeds in making a rerun feel like something you haven’t seen before."
• Collider: “Snake Eye’s emotional throughline works where its action doesn’t because it only has to play out across [Henry] Golding’s face. It’s the type of performance that puts me, the reviewer, in the unenviable position of being honest about the film’s quality but still desperate to see more Golding in as big of projects as possible…”
• Indie Wire: “Snake Eyes is such a generic “cage-fighting orphan gets recruited into the Yakuza and then tries to earn his way into Japan’s most respected ninja clan” story that the valuable I.P. behind it seems almost irrelevant until the third act.”
• Screen Daily: “Whether it’s the uninspired dialogue or the toned-down violence, Snake Eyes feels like a tame, anonymous product, saddling its main character with a tepid tragic backstory in the hopes that it will add poignancy to his narrative arc.”
• The Philadelphia Enquirer:  “Like many toy-based movies, Snake Eyes might be betting too much on audiences caring about the connections to a broader universe of Joes more than the story in front of them.”
• The Los Angeles Times: “Though it couldn’t have augured well for fans that the film’s titling convention hearkens to the widely reviled X_-Men Origins: Wolverine, Snake Eyes_ ends up having enough good-time action sequences to make it worth the popcorn money.”