The plot ultimately hinges on a magic jewel that can blow stuff up nice and big, just one illustration of how a script reliant on time-tested tropes can turn out underdone regardless. As is part and parcel to this narrative tradition, honor and self-discipline will be weighed against hubris and rage, honor will be tested – we know the deal as well as Snake knows his way around a katana.
He infiltrates the elite Arashikage clan on behalf of Kenta (Takehiro Hira), the prodigal son once positioned for the top spot, now intent on taking it by force.
Cut to 20 years later and he’s still nurturing that grudge, so bent on retribution that he’s willing to play double agent for the nefarious Cobra syndicate just to get a shot at Dad’s killer. The early years of the boy who would be Snake Eyes go by the genre’s book, lighting a fire of vengeance in his young heart with a vicious attack that claims his father’s life. The international language uniting this pan-Asian trans-Pacific affair is the beatdown, delivered here with an inventive playfulness, albeit with an impact lessened by leaden western techniques. The background of Team Joe’s resident ninja Snake Eyes (Henry Golding) takes the shape of a martial arts showcase informed by both Japanese jidaigeki and Chinese wuxia cinemas, an apropos melding for a film set in Tokyo, featuring Malaysian and Indonesian actors, and primed for release in the lucrative Chinese market. Robert Schwentke’s film arrives as both spin-off and prequel to a pair of rah-rah action GI Joe pictures/feature-length toy advertisements from 20, long enough ago that no one’s beholden to an elaborate architecture of continuity which must be buttressed and expanded. That’s the long and short of the new Snake Eyes, a largely interchangeable hunk of Hollywood product somewhat distinguished by its Asiatic regional particulars.
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