Showing from April 5: G.I. Joe: Retaliation **

Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Channing Tatum, Bruce Willis, Adrianne Palicki, RZA, Jonathan Pryce
Director: Jon M. Chu
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Southside Theatre. Fri-Sat 7:15pm,  9:30pm, Sun 4:30pm, 7:15pm, Mon-Thurs 7.45pm.
Runtime: 110 minutes
Action, adventure, sci-fi

A better-than-average, gravity-defying ninja duel leads to an epic chase — by leaps, swings and ziplines — through the Himalayas in the big set-piece sequence of G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Masked villains in red ninja suits chase Snake Eyes and Jinx as they attempt to spirit a ninja villain out of a mountaintop lair. They scamper, by rope, across impossible slopes, swinging their swords.

And when a line is cut, the victim yowls into the void. It may be the most dazzling bit of business of its kind from the age of digital stunts.

The rest of the movie? Seriously, it’s a live-action version of an ‘80s cartoon that was designed to sell toys. This is Transformers without the Bumblebee Camaro, a lot of action, a few one-liners, and a lot of gunplay. And it was entrusted to the director of the Justin Bieber concert documentary. How good can it be?

Acting? We’ll have none of that. Just D. Johnson manfully wielding an Arnold-sized heavy machine gun, masked stunt artists dodging pointy slo-mo 3-D ninja stars, and Pryce, hamming it up as both a serious, imprisoned president and a snarky super villain disguised as that president.

Things go boom and bodies go down and the one hour and fifty minutes zip by like oh, two hours and ten. There’s a “nuclear weapons are good for us” message that also seems positively ‘80s.

But at least there are no jive talking, joking and pontificating robots. Just ninjas. “Damn ninjas.”