My Review: The Expendables 2 (4/10)

"Track him, find him, kill him."

The Expendable 2 is a ridiculous and over the top action film that tries to connect with the audience through nostalgic action scenes and cheesy one liners. Teaming these great action stars from the 80's was a great idea and appealed to us in the first Expendables because we hadn't seen these actors do anything interesting in a long time, but in the sequel that novelty is gone and it felt like a complete embarrassment seeing these once great and talented actors working with such a lazy and predictable script. These action films full of testosterone kind of have the same appeal for men that Katherine Heigl's films have for women. Not even director Simon West who has made some decent action films in the past couldn't save this film from becoming such a train wreck. I really enjoyed Con Air and thought The Mechanic was entertaining, but this has to be one of his weakest efforts as a director. There are so many cheesy lines and dialogues in this film that it's not even funny. Arnold Schwarzenegger repeats his "I'll be back" line from Terminator like three times, Bruce Willis tells Arnold "You've been terminated," and several more lines that try to appeal to our memory of those great films of the past. I think that it was a great idea to reunite these guys for one movie, but a sequel was completely unnecessary.

The team from the first film is back with Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) leading the guns for hire crew which consists of Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunnar (Dolph Lundgren), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), and Toll Road (Randy Couture).  Barney hires some fresh blood for their next mission, former US soldier Billy (Liam Hemsworth), who everyone pretty much calls the Kid. CIA agent Church (Bruce Willis) hires the men for a simple mission that consists of retrieving something from a crashed plane in Asia. He assigns his assistant, Maggie (Nan Yu) to go with them and bring back the device they are looking for. The mission goes wrong when some men are waiting for them at the crash site and take The Kid hostage forcing them to drop their weapons and give them the device they've come to retrieve. Vilain (Jean Claude Van Damme) takes the device and the Expendables are forced to regroup in order to face Vilain and his team known as The Sangs. 

In my opinion the best thing about The Expendables 2 are the two new additions: Jean Claude Van Damme as the villain and Chuck Norris who has a couple of cameos. The scenes with Chuck Norris are hilarious as he plays along with the famous internet memes about him. He mentions how once a cobra bit him in the dessert and after five days in agonizing pain the cobra died. The Expendables does play a lot with the stereotypes of each actor and the films that made them famous, but the action scenes aren't worth saving this movie. There is nothing unique or original about this film, we've seen it all before with much better scripts. This film is so predictable that you could tell everything that was going to happen. It is just a lazy repeat of the 80's action genre films. The self deprecating jokes didn't really work for me. 

My Review: The Expendables (7/10)

¨ We are the shadow, the smoke in your eyes, the ghosts that hide in the night. ¨

Sylvester Stallone directs, writes, and stars in The Expendables, an action packed movie that knows exactly who its target audience is: Men. This film pays homage to the action movies from the 80`s and 90´s, and either stars or has cameos from most of these actors (Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger). The Expendables also stars some of today`s action heroes as well such as Jet Li, Jason Statham, Steve Austin, and Randy Couture. Stallone had previously written and directed other of his movies, such as the Rocky and Rambo franchise. The reason I actually enjoyed this movie was obviously not because of the plot, but because it was just great to see all these stars working together and doing what they do best. The action scenes are raw and really bring back the nostalgic feeling of the 80`s B action movies. The film will satisfy those blood thirsty action fans who want to see real choreographed action scenes, plenty gun and knife fights, crushed bones, and a lot of explosions without relying on the CGI effects. The Expendables isn`t a smart movie, the plot is formulaic and predictable, but the action makes up for it. It doesn`t try to be something it shouldn´t, it knows exactly who its target audience is and will only satisfy them. It`s not like ¨Killers¨ for example that really lost itself by trying to target different audience groups and couldn`t be defined in any genre. The Expendables is a fun and entertaining action film and it doesn`t try to be anything else.

Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) is the leader of a group of mercenaries who call themselves the Expendables. The team consists of Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), a man who really appreciates his knives and is having some love issues; Ying Yang (Jet Li), an expert in martial arts who is always being made fun of because he is the smallest of the group; Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), who handles heavy machinery; Toll Road (Randy Couture), the demolitionist, and Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren) the sniper who is beginning to go a little crazy. The Expendables return from a successful mission in Somalia, although Barney has to cut Gunner from the group because he is becoming dangerous and unreliable. Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) offers the group a new mission on a small South American island where they have to overthrow the military dictator General Garza (David Zayas). The General receives the money to support his military dictatorship from an American drug dealer named James Munroe (Eric Roberts). Barney and Lee travel to the island in order to scout the enemy where they meet one of the rebels named Sandra (Giselle Itié). Barney decides the mission is too risky and doesn`t want the group to get involved. He offers Sandra to escape with them, but she decides to stay and fight the enemy. Back in America, Barney has a talk with his good friend and tattoo artist Tool (Mickey Rourke) and he decides the right thing to do is accept the job and rescue Sandra.

The Expendables is one of those fun action movies that is enjoyed even more because of the cast. I would recommend this movie only to fans of the 80`s action films who would like to bring back the memories. This is not a film for everyone, and is specifically a man made movie. I really had a lot of fun, but this is no masterpiece. This isn`t a smart action movie with good dialogues like Tarantino films, but it has the best action stars who are really good at kicking butt. The movie also has a couple of funny scenes which made the movie all the more entertaining. The fighting scenes were excellent, there is a lot of gore, but the plot is pretty simple, however that doesn`t take away all the fun you experience while watching all these men get their bones broken and killed. It has been a long time since I saw such a high body count, and gratuitous violence, but this is the sort of thing you are expecting from a movie like this. I didn`t think I would have as much fun with The Expendables like I did, but this is definitely not a movie for everyone. If you hate violent films then you will not want to see this. This is for fans of the 80`s action movies who would like to bring back some of the nostalgia.

http://estebueno10.blogspot.com/