Wednesday, August 25, 2010

New Release: The Expendables (some spoilers - if you care)

The new Sylvester Stallone movie, The Expendables, sets its tone early and actually keeps it up for almost all of its 90 minute runtime.  That tone is a throwback to when its stars were 20 years younger and that, in my humble opinion, is what was missing from this years The Losers and probably The A-Team (though I haven't seen it yet).  It's balls-out action and sibling rivalry-type humor (particularly between Stallone and Statham).  There is no "love interest" which is nice to see, given that Stallone is over 60 (and Hollywood women rarely are in action movies).  He plays the leader of a mercenary-for-hire group of miscreants, including Jason Statham and Jet Li, among others.  The opening scene shows them rescuing some businessmen from Somali pirates.  They have big guns, huge muscles and a self-promoted talent for killing.  They return to their hangout back in the States, which happens to be Mickey Rourke's tattoo parlor (wouldn't you totally guess that Mickey Rourke would own a junky tattoo place?  perfect setting).  Rourke is finishing a tattoo on Stallone's back, when he gets a call about a new job.  Stallone goes to get the details about the job, which happens to be offered by Bruce Willis to both Stallone and Schwarzenegger and the scene with the three of them bantering is hysterical.  The job makes up the rest of the movie, whether they'll do it, how they'll do it, etc.  I saw the movie with my dad, and halfway through the job he leaned over and said, "I think they've killed about 200 people so far" just at the moment I started thinking, "Wow, they've killed a lot of people".  It's good action, with lots of explosions and fight scenes, but for me, that's when the movie starts to drag.  My only other complaint with the movie is the #2 bad guy.  Eric Roberts plays the really bad guy, but he's controlling a dictator in a cocaine producing country, played by David Zayas - Angel from "Dexter" who I so wanted to love, but he's terrible, just awful.  But he doesn't matter - Eric Roberts is the real bad-ass to fight Stallone.
Overall, fun fare, middle of the road.  I'd give it a 2.5, but must bump it up to 3 for the Willis/Scwarzenegger cameos.

3 comments:

David Bishop said...

I went to a midnight showing for this one. I wanted to love, but could only manage to barely like it.

Castor said...

Got to side with David there. Pretty atrocious movie and you end up only barely liking it because of the nostalgia factor.

Jess said...

I liked it a little more than that, probably the campy nature appealed to me.