Expendables 2 (2012)
Expendables
2 (R)
"An Elderly Action Star Too Far"
It’s only been two years since Sylvester Stallone and his
new self-plagiarizing franchise arrived, and they have both aged rather
poorly. Someone was obviously listening to the criticisms of the
original Expends and stuffed even more out-of-work action stars onto the
playbill, shoved massive guns in their hands with terrible words in
their mouths and let them happily destroy the last vestiges of natural
beauty in any third world country who charges the least for the
privilege. The zealousness to recapture that 1980s action film has left
them blind to the fact that the vast majority of those films were utter
vapid trash. The few remarkable and entertaining action flicks from
that era were treasured by us the viewers because they were unique and
usually had just that little extra undefinable something. It wasn’t
just “more stars” and “higher body counts” and “more one liners”.
Unfortunately that is what the producers took away from EX1, making its
sequel a movie so devoid of plot and so full of flopping bodies and head
pops and ridiculous blood gushers that it’s almost a self-fulfilling
parody. Luckily this time the success to failure ratio is a tad higher,
with Lundgren again outshining his fellow teammates, its cameos are
more than just obvious winks at the camera, the action is sustained
throughout the film, and Jean Claude Van Dam basically steals the show
as the villainously greasy antagonist named "Villain" (...really?).
Throw in a good old fashioned “end the movie with a one on one fistfight
between good and evil” and you are in blockbuster town, right? Well
not so fast sport. The cinematography looks like something you’d scrape
off the bottom of your shoe (the razor thin plot will work nicely for
that). The old jokes and one liners were funny when they were just
middle aged, but now its borderline depressing. Chuck Norris is
obviously uncomfortable and overmatched, but Jet Li gets the role of
"one scene and I'm out" this time around. The chemically induced alien
anatomy of Stallone just keeps getting harder to look in the face
without cringing, and just what is Liam Hemsworth doing in this film
besides being more likeable/killable/believable as an actor? Overall,
delivers more on the promise of “80s Action Star Mega Film” than the
original even as it disgraces itself with its incoherent-ignorant film
making and severe lack of decent plastic surgery.
5 Actual Dead Stuntmen out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)
