Expendables 2
Sylvester Stallone’s original Expendables was a welcome return to the high octane, no pussing out style of 80s action films. Featuring amazing gunfights and explosions, good villains, and plenty of well written, high testosterone camaraderie and character development, the film succeeded on almost every level which it set out to achieve, leaving fans hungry for the sequels. Well, here the first one came in 2012, and while an exhausted Stallone gave up the director’s chair to Simon (Con Air) West, he still came back to star and to be the co writer of the script. The original core group (Statham, Li, Lundgren, Crews and Couture) also returned, although Jet Li only appears in the first 10 minutes of the film (long enough to have a major martial arts fight) before being dropped from the story (literally), never to return. As for the remaining, Statham gets his character focus lessened but still maintains his position as Sly’s best friend and confidante even as his character we are told is preparing to marry his long time girlfriend (Charisma Carpenter) who’s getting back together with him was a major subplot of the first film but now gets shoved directly to the back burner. Lundgren as the loose cannon with substance abuse probems now takes on more of a hulking, creepy attempt at major comic relief and pretty much succeeds. As for Crews and Couture, their roles are now reduced to being a redundant duo known for saying the same basic things but still fading into the background more and more (which is probably for the best since neither are exactly great actors). What WAS exciting for fans was in seeing the NEW additions to the cast and what kind of role they would play. First up is Chuck Norris (who is given an awesome entrance but only has an extended cameo really) as some kind of lone wolf commando type (he only works alone) who suddenly shows up at one point to save the day and then seems to reappear whenever he is actually needed (okay). Then there is Liam Hemsworth (the prettiest of pretty boys) as the new junior member of the team, fitting in just as well as a wrench in a bowl of cereal and even worse, threatening to sink the whole movie with a completely passive, robotic performance with the worst bit being with him recalling a bad encounter in Afghanistan while you can just imagine the production assistant running the teleprompter off camera telling him what to say. But on the bright side, we do get a female member added to the team in the form of Nan Yu as a Chinese operative who has the task of actually using the top secret device which they’re trying to obtain, but at least unlike Hemsworth she manages to bring beauty, charisma, likability and fairly decent acting ability to the table (and all while filling in the role of the female who “inspires” Stallone’s character, a running theme in this series). And then in the all important role of the film’s main villain, we get Jean-Claude Van Damme (with Scott Atkins as his main henchman) taking a major risk with his own good guy image as an Eastern European mercenary (with a small army behind him) who hints at a possible Satanic / Occult belief system with the tattoo he sports on his neck even as he seems to have little to no regard for human life whatsoever, even going so far as enslaving the men in a village to do hard manual labor for him in a mine and shooting anyone who complains of being “tired”. The film (as the first one did) begins with the crew being on a routine, everyday mission in Nepal to recover “some Chinese billionaire” who has been kidnapped. After merrily slaughtering their way through all defenses and racking up a body count that would rival a small nation’s (oh wait), who should they find but Stallone’s old rival Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who has been captured as well. After returning home, Stallone suddenly finds himself approached by Church (Bruce Willis), the shadowy CIA man who had set up the mission in the first movie, now claiming that Stallone and his men somehow “owe” him and sending him on this new mission to recover some kind of map to the mines where The Russians had hidden away billions of dollars worth of valuable weapons grade plutonium and to keep it far away from either our enemies or those who would sell it to our enemies at market price (such as Van Damme). Keep in mind that both Willis and Schwarzenegger have been given greatly expanded roles here from the original film as they (just like Norris) seem to just show up whenever they’re needed even when it makes little to no sense (especially with Arnold). But really the filmmakers don’t seem to care that much especially when their main concern is in supplying us with big blow em up action scenes where (usually horribly trained considering their proficiency) enemy soldiers are reduced to being either horribly charred or bloody, bullet ridden pieces of meat (don’t any of these guys have families of their own who can mourn for them?) while the main core group of characters (of course) never seem to get a scratch on them through all the carnage while it’s a real surprise if they actually do. It also makes one wonder just how and why negotiations fell through with Mickey Rourke to return from the first film as Tool, the “retired” member of the group who nonetheless in just one scene of dramatic acting managed to give the original movie enough actual weight and levity to separate it from this sequel (and most other action movies) as far as being something that can be taken seriously and not just another mindless exercise. Indeed, by the time we get to the big finale (with Stallone, Arnold and Willis all standing side by side together just firing away indiscrimately at the bad guys) it’s pretty clear that the script itself has just gone completely out the window as we even see Arnold and Willis break off into their own little corner and start making fun of each other’s catchphrases (“I’ll be back.” “Yippie kai yai.”). But the good news is that it does set up an epic final one on one showdown between Stallone and Van Damme, for whom the arrogance of his bad guy is about the only real thing that he can bring to his performance given that otherwise he doesn’t really have too much to work with here (unlike the awesome villainry shown by Eric Roberts and Steve Austin in Part One) and much of his big final battle with Stallone is solely based on the stature that both men have in being two of the biggest action movie stars of their time (although Stallone was obviously at a level which Van Damme never reached). Statham for his part (remember that he was the knife throwing expert) does get to demonstrate his skills in one major fight scene against 10 poorly trained men while Lundgren (considering what happened to his character before) finally gets to spend a whole movie being an undisputed good guy. That leaves Crews and Couture again, and anyone who remembers their big moments in Expendables 1 (Crews pulling out his big ass supergun and Couture getting the honor of singlehandedly taking out the Austin character) will be sorely disappointed by what they see here as they literally wind up being in the rear with the gear and not doing much of anything to get themselves noticed (which is still better than Jet Li and his disappearing act very early on) but as far as the writing goes that shows the brutal bond which all these guys have (which was very good to excellent in the first movie) we get to see a few good zingers here (especially from Lundgren in the bit where they all say what their last meals would be if they could decide) but for the most part it’s pretty disappointing as they just seem to be moving along with the story and setting up where the next Arnold / Willis / Norris appearance will be in the film. It’s a shame, since Stallone really had appeared to strike gold with this franchise and these characters (and very well could again) but instead it just seems that focusing more on the mindless action and keeping the very large cast in check became more of a priority here than maybe it should have been as while any mindless movie can have action, in the end what always made any action movie great was with its actual writing…
7/10