Expendables 2 Review
Pretty expendable, in my opinion.
I have been looking forward to this movie, to be honest. I enjoyed the first Expendables with the same guilty pleasure that makes me enjoy watching videos of guys getting hit in the testicles with baseballs and the like. Intellectually I don’t feel like I have at all improved my attitude, karma, or life in any way, but the animalistic brain stem part of my personality gains a deep satisfaction by watching literally mindless violence imparted on evil minions by guys who starred in most of the greatest action films of my childhood (Expendables poster image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category).
This move definitely has the mindless violence covered, and more blood and action than a chainsaw juggler on meth. If that is all you want you will enjoy it immensely. However, the first movie at least tried to qualify as a movie, with an actual story, character development, and pacing. This movie has more or less given up on all that and not even bothered. The “plot” is perfunctory at best and only serves to connect the action sequences with all the cohesion of spit and toe jam. While some minor effort is wasted on trying to develop the characters it fails miserable, sabotaged by poor acting, poor direction, and dialog that seemed to shift back and forth from barely tolerable to wishing I was listening to metal albums backwards in hopes of hearing a Satanic message.
What then about the real draw of this film? What about the collection of all the greatest action heroes from the last 30 years? Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Stratham, Li, Lundgren, Norris, Van Damme, and Willis? With all that concentrated awesome in one film shouldn’t the movie achieve cinema cold fusion and spontaneously generate the greatest action film of all time? Unfortunately, no. It was actually a case of too much of a good thing. You get excited to see Arnold again, then Willis, and by the time you get to Chuck Norris you are kind of over it. Also, with the exception of Bruce Willis and arguably Stratham none of these action guys are well known for their acting ability, an issue that compounds itself with each additional scene. The problem was exacerbated by the newcomers also being pretty mediocre actors. You would think they might have tried hiring some talent for this. The guy I most liked got killed in the first 20 minutes.
Furthermore the “plot devices” they used to crowbar in each of these guys didn’t so much suspend my disbelief as eviscerate it and hang the remains from a gibbet. Each actor had to have some kind of reference to their trademark movie inserted with all the finesse of an anesthesia-less tracheostomy performed with gardening sheers. It’s funny how in the review I did for the recent Total Recall I enjoyed the clever references to the prior movie. Here the term “ham handed” fails to encompass how awkward, out of place, and disconnecting every “I’ll be back” or “lone wolf” joke felt.
The story, for lack of a better term. The Expendables are still running around Third World countries killing hapless locals in pursuit of money. Their old nemesis Church (Bruce Willis) shows up to extort them into doing a simple mission for him (this was actually the only non action scene I really liked to be honest. Bruce Willis can actually act). Barney (Sylvester Stallone) collects the rest of his team and hooks up with a sort of hot Asian girl (Nan Yu) who is tagging along as an expert in the technology of the safe they have to crack open. Apparently they are after some data that is the only know location for five tons of weapons grade plutonium left over from the cold war. It is in a high tech safe on a crashed plane (I guess no one uses email these days) that is somewhere in what I thought was China but later turned out to be some kind of Ukrainian peasant country. I guess they don’t investigate crashed planes.
Anyway, they find the data but are ambushed on the way out by the villain cleverly named Vilain (see what they did there? John Claude Van Damme, by the way). He captures the data from them but instead of either killing the whole team or just sending them on their way he does the stupidest thing possible, killing the one young guy in the most telegraphed death scene since Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. This of course motivates Stallone to lay out the entire rest of the plot in six words: “Track them. Find them. Kill them.”
Honestly that’s pretty much the rest of the movie. Lots of stuff gets blown up. The Expendables are fully capably of one shoting dozens of guys while zip lining down a massive cliff but the bad guys can’t hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn. Seriously, the inability of trained mercenaries to hit squat from 20 feet firing on full auto got really ridiculous after a while. Most of the movie was like watching someone else play Duke Nukem on easy mode. Jet Li is in the first part of the film but then disappears, possibly off to do an action movie.
Anyway, the stars. The action, while ridiculous enough to make a trained monkey performing brain surgery seem believable, was exactly what the movie makers set out to do and what most of the audience most likely wants. Two stars. While the acting was execrable and the cramming of stars felt like coming in second in a week old hot dog eating contest, it was super cool to see all those past stars on one film. Three stars. I actually really enjoyed Van Damme as the villain and thought he did the best job of all of them. One star. The final fight scene between Barney and Vilain was pretty cool. One star. Overall a fun movie that accomplishes exactly what it set out to do. Two stars. Total: nine stars.
The black holes. The story was God awful. One black hole. They sped through a lot of the plot advancing stuff, leaving what a less generous reviewer might call massive plot holes. One black hole. I honestly feel kind of ripped off at only 102 minutes. Another 12-15 minutes of plot, story, or character development would have been very well received. One black hole. The action was so ridiculous (especially surrounding Chuck Norris) that it actually hurt my brain. Also, what is the point of having Chuck Norris in a film that celebrates his action hero status but then not have him do any martial arts? One black hole. The crow barring in of bad jokes from past movies (or, in the case of Chuck Norris, bad Chuck Norris jokes) was really distracting. One black hole. The acting was almost universally like watching a scenery chewing contest. I don’t know who won but I definitely know who lost, and we were sitting in the theater. One black hole. They somehow found a non-action star love interest who had all the sexual chemistry of watching water evaporate. Her acting actually made most of the other acting seem better in comparison. One black hole. Total: seven black holes.
A grand total of two stars, and to be honest I was reticent in my awarding of black holes. On a different day I might have dumped a lot more. However, you have to bear in mind what this movie set out to do. If all you want in mindless, dumb violence than you have found the equivalent of the Godfather. If you are looking for a story more complicated than a weak episode of Muppet Babies and acting more accomplished than a Punch and Judy skit than perhaps you had best walk on. If you do want to see it watch on a big screen. Date movie? Hell no. This film is an anti-date movie. Bathroom break? While no one scene is really critical for the story, if you want to not miss any of the action I would recommend the camping scene in the abandoned pizza restaurant. Nothing really happens besides bad sort of romance.
Thanks for reading. I will see at least one more movie tomorrow so look for another review soon. Jason is getting back tomorrow so he might be posting soon. If you have comments or questions related to this movie or my review of it feel free to post here. If you have off topic questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
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