I'd been looking forward to this one from the first moment I caught a glimpse of the movie poster--Stallone, Li, Statham, Willis, Lundgren....
I thought I died and went to action-movie heaven. The promise of a movie that also squeezes in Schwartzenegger, Roarke, Eric Roberts as a bad, bad man, and Randy Couture, Steve Austin, and Terry Crews, and oh by the way, also has kickboxing's awesome Gary Daniels (not a big enough part) and Charisma Carpenter who I adored on Angel (I have unresolved feelings about how her character got handled, is all....)
It's like Christmas! (Um, that's actually the Jason Statham character's name. Although Stallone's "Barney Ross" is a normal enough name, we have Randy Couture as "Toll Road", Mickey Roarke as "Tool", Jet Li, somewhat awfully as "Ying Yang", and Terry Crews as "Hale Caesar"....yeah. These aren't names, they're wrestling handles. Although Randy Couture wins by having such a great name in real life. It's what I would totally name a lingerie store, if I were gonna start one.) There is no way in the universe that such a movie could ever suck with so many awesome people in it, I found myself thinking. In fact, even if it was brainless action nonsense, I would love that it was the quintessence of the genre of brainless action nonsense. More, bigger, faster, things exploding, muscles pumping, dialogue getting chewed up and spit out like a used, whatever those gun cartridge-thingies are called.
And then I saw it, and it was actually good.
Now, by "good", you could be thinking all kinds of things; it was a good action movie. It was a meta-action-movie, also. We begin with a vision of how the "expendable" team works as they bloodily handle a hostage situation involving pirates. It's there that we learn, by way of terse dialogue and loads of action, who the team is and what the character's specialities are. Ross is the leader. Christmas the cocky one with the blades, and Lundgren's Gunnar is a bit of a head-case. But it isn't until the most meta scene in a church where Bruce Willis (or, "Mr. Church") offers a mission in a South American fictional place to Ross's team, or to his rival Trench (fun cameo by Arnold) that the movie is really "set". The Schwartzenegger character immediately thinks the job smells like bad news and exits, and this leaves Ross ready to take up an ugly job with his band of mercenaries.
I'm going to elide over all the plot-bits. You can go watch the movie if you want to know about them. The things I want to point out are that there are some pretty good scenes by Roberts and especially Mickey Roarke. There's this one scene where the camera just focuses on that beat-up face as he goes on about how a life of violence makes you lose your soul--that was deep. Also, a scene I found provocative was where the courageous and dissident daughter of the General of the country where the Expendables are charged with wreaking their havoc is water boarded by the bad guys. To me, this was almost like a statement that this is the kind of thing bad guys do. I don't know if because of my biases I read more into it than was there.
Things blow up, massive quantities of ammo gets used, males bond over smoking, drinking, and getting inked, women are rescued from bad men and there are some pretty righteous fight scenes. Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li get into it in a scene that demonstrates why size isn't always an advantage, and thankfully, there are two good fight scenes with Steve Austin--one with Stallone, which was pretty good, and the one I was waiting for, with Randy Couture, that had some awesomeness but unfortunately, probably because of the tight timing of the movie, couldn't have been longer. That was the match-up I'd have wanted to see more of, just as a long-time wrestling fan.
Anyway, although the violence is ridiculous, the plot could be seen as contrived, and the characters for the most part remain sketchy--I think for your summer action movie dollar, you're really getting bang for your buck. There's some good jokes and if you like machismo or just watching muscle-y guys shoot and/or blow up stuff, which is apparently a fetish I have, you'll enjoy the hell out of this. I sure did.
Although I will say, I sat through a half-hour of adverts before the movie, which almost put me in the wrong mood. Hey--cinema-people! I am not interested in buying a phone or having a Coke. By all means show me previews of similar movies to insure I come back for another motion picture, but don't subject me to such a downer of adverts that I am almost too irked to like the movie once it starts--
Grr! I brought in outside drinks, fools. I wish I brought candy, too! Think about that next time you want to rob me of my experience; I will not eat your nachos, no! Those overpriced nachos are being paid for with what? Cell-phone ads? Adverts for HBO shows that aren't even the demographic of the movie I came to see?
What? I'm sharing my outside candy, too. I'm going to pass out M&M's. And you won't stop me.
No, I kid. I don't share candy. That was just me with my testosterone up from this kick-ass action movie....
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