"If this movie doesn't beat 'Eat, Pray, Love,' YOU. DON'T. DESERVE. TO BE. A. MAN."
-One notable YouTube trailer
Co Bao: "Why did they pick you? Because you like to fight?"
Rambo: "I'm expendable."
First Blood Part II, making a title drop nearly three decades early
"Despite the hype and the opening releases, all The Expendables proves is that the world has moved on since the 1990's when Stallone was putting the final touches to his reign as action king and what worked then doesn't necessarily work now."
-Tymon Smith, Times LIVE
"[Stallone] is still working under the tradition of the action B-movies that flourished [...] in the 80's and early 90's and still employing legions of stunt actors and explosives riggers in the service of his vision, which is an old and durable one that bad guys need killing. You can't exactly say that he has aged gracefully, but grace has never been part of Stallone's appeal."
-A.O. Scott, The New York Times
So goes the hype (and criticism) for Stallone's latest big-budget, testosterone-fueled, beat-'em-up, shoot-'em-up, and (just for good measure) blow-'em-up, action star team-'em-up known as "The Expendables," which teams up Sly with Jason Statham, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Jet Li, and...some other action "stars" I've never come across before...as a team of gun-toting, fire-shooting, knife-throwing, body-slamming, neck-snapping, skull-shattering, Harley-ridin' badasses who, despite their status as under-the-radar thugs for hire who have probably been dishonorably discharged by more covert agencies and black ops organizations than you've probably even heard of, are anything but expendable.
I'll spare you the plot breakdown, because even if you're not part of the "Eat, Pray, Love" crowd who thinks these fine, upstanding mercenaries might have anger issues, you're still probably just wondering if this movie is any good, or if it happens to be...expendable? (ha ha, rly funny lol!)
Well, this movie is not without its flaws. For one thing, you can kind of tell that this is a Stallone vehicle about five minutes in; the Sly-dog has a habit of making things "bigger and badder." In Rocky II the title hero takes on Apollo Creed in a rematch, while the sequels saw him in a fight with Mr. T, a fish-out-of-water wrestling match with Hulk Hogan, and his vengeance bout against the Soviet juggernaut Ivan Drago. In First Blood, the Sly-dog's other alter ego is pitted against some local cops; in the sequel he's practically taking on the Viet Cong single-handed. (With arrows! That explode!)
I suppose this escalation of arms isn't necessarily a bad thing (otherwise the prospect of half a dozen action stars teaming up in one movie wouldn't be marketable), but the "warning shot" at the beginning is a sign of things to come. Midway through, Sly and Statham (hogging a good twenty or thirty minutes of this chunk of the plot) have to fight their way off the island. The climax, of course, is a demonstration of what happens when you take six guys as badass as them and pit them against one very pissed-off army.
The climax, of course, is as explosive as you'd expect. In fact, there are almost too many explosions. When it comes down to the final shoot-'em-up against the bad guys, it suffers from both a combination of the constant explosions and the need filmmakers have nowadays to shoot a sort of pseudo-documentary, where everything is in close-up, the camera's constantly shaking, and you can't tell what's going on. One could argue that this reflects the chaotic nature of warfare (which is a more realistic take than, say, Rambo blazing through an army of faceless Viet Cong to his own adventurous background music), but the result is that you can't tell who's fighting who, and you can't care about who's kicking ass, who's getting his ass kicked, who's getting shot, who's getting blown up, whose upper or lower body just ceased to exist...
Is this movie "politically correct?" No, not by a long shot. The women are weak and need protecting from the big strong men, and the antagonists (with the exception of the slimy corporate "owner" of the island and his bodyguard) are all faceless foreign soldiers. The characters resort to excessive force to solve their problems (especially if Drago 2.0's method of dealing with a hostage situation is anything to go by), rather than...oh, using "non-excessive" force like Jason Bourne. Or trying to commit suicide like a certain "female role model."
That being said, there is a heart underneath it all (though these guys wouldn't admit to it, as no guy ever should...). There are scenes, mostly toward the beginning and in the middle, which are used to develop these persons of mass destruction. Don't get me wrong, it's still "character development" in a movie about persons of mass destruction, but it's something. They eat, they drink, they have kids and women on the side, they worry about their next paycheck, they love, they hurt, they cry. It's a movie for guys, about guys, including how we deal with our buddies sometimes. We hang out, we laugh, we talk about our women, we cr...cry...sometimes...we fight over whose knife is bigger and who can throw it better, and when we get pissed off, we fight to show the other guy who's boss. It's a guy thing. And then you get over it, you drink it off and ten minutes later you're laughing about it again.
There is a focus on certain members of the Expendables team over others. As you might expect, the big names get a lot of the screen time, with Jason Statham and the Sly-dog himself probably getting the most scenes. Stone Cold, Jet Li, and to a lesser extent Dolph Lundgren and Mickey Rourke have some scene focus, with...those other guys getting shafted. This is probably to be expected, though; would you really expect a mixed martial artist or whoever that guy with the big mook-exploding gun is to carry a scene on their own? You might notice I didn't mention Schwarzenegger or Willis, but their roles are reduced to cameos anyway, since the Governator is running California, and Bruce Willis had other business to attend to.
So overall, is "The Expendables" a good movie? Yes. Is it a great movie? No. Let's face it, the Sly-dog and his counterparts back in the 80's did the same thing in the middle of a jungle, by themselves, with no backup, no iPods or means of escape, no remote-controlled C4 detonators or Head-and-Torso-Removal Apparati. On that criterion alone, this movie can't be considered "great." But is it a good movie? Yes. Yes it is.
Note: The Brewsky is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer, and the views expressed here (especially the nice things he said about the movie) are those of his affiliates and sponsors. Whatever he was reviewing, it was a good, good movie. Hey, you can stop holding that gun to my head now. No need to waste a bullet.
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