Hang On to The Expendables

I fully well went into the theater expecting The Expendables to be a really stupid, pretty bad, “shit done blowed up!” action movie. And I was most definitely right about the last part. However, concerning the first two, I was dead wrong. If you’ve seen a trailer for this movie, you know it’s basically the idea that if you take every single action star you can find and put them in one movie, you’ll get something pretty kickass. The result is a Reese’s peanut butter cup covered in peanut butter and chocolate; it’s good-wrapped goodness you’d expect to be hard to swallow but it actually goes down really well.

The plot is pretty thin, but it’s fleshed out for what it is. It’s like construction paper really. No, it won’t hold up a lot of weight if you put some on it, but it wasn’t meant to. Some evil dictator in some South American island is evil, and these guys go out to stop him. For what it is (and isn’t) it pulls off the plot fairly well. There are a few twists and turns but nothing you can’t see when you queue up for the roller coaster.

The acting is, surprisingly, well done. It’s not going to win any Oscars, but it’s an action movie, and since the cast are veteran action movie actors (or wrestlers) they can act their rolls well enough to service the parts. One weak point I’d point out is in Mickey Rourke’s part. He was cast to play the hollowed, war-weary, housewife member of the group who stays home and provides the stereotypical, “war is bad and it makes me sad inside” character that gives the rest of the group a moral home base so they can do the base running with explosions. Another weak point was Dolph Lundgren’s character, who was supposed to be the mad dog, tugging and pulling on its leash. His portrayal of the role was underwhelming but the role itself is most likely to blame.

As far as the characters of the movie go, I enjoyed all but Dolph’s. Sylvester Stallone plays the old-but-not-too-old-to-kick-ass veteran leader of the team. He does this well and, as with almost every other actor and their respective roles, manages to fatten up a flat part. Jason Statham plays the second in command and provides the young attitude to combat Stallone’s old attitude. Throughout the movie they have a mild back and forth contest of who’s badasseder. Providing the background roles are Jet Li, Randy Couture (who is almost absent from the film), and, stealing the show wonderfully, Terry Crews. Eric Roberts is a good bad guy, David Zayas is a good dictator-turned-softy, and Steve Austin is good muscle. Giselle Itié is a good leading lady and despite having a fairly small part, she fills it well and brings a strong female character, something most fiction tends to lack. It’s nice to know she doesn’t just roll over when the bad guys point a gun at her and it takes more than a slap to take her down. In another nice turn, all of the good guys, and even some of the bad guys aren’t misogynistic. Eric Roberts’ character won’t strike Giselle Itié’s character, and Jason Statham sees his 90-seconds-of-screentime girlfriend has a bruise from her new boyfriend and proceeds to beat the hell out of him and make a ball joke while he’s at it.

And that’s a lot of what this movie is. Not ball jokes, but balls. There’s so much machismo and testosterone in this movie I swear that the cameras were operated by giant testicles. And while a lot of times that lends itself to a movie screaming at the audience, “LOOK HOW COOL I AM AREN’T I COOL YOU LOVE ME LOVE ME I WANT YOUR LOVE I’M AWESOME,” this movie is actually just cool by its own merit and doesn’t force its coolness down your throat. As I mentioned, shit blows up, and really well. For an action movie about impossible action it manages to keep suspension of disbelief most of the time. It opens up with the crew performing a hostage rescue and it quickly breaks that suspension with some shoddy night vision effects and them treating a delicate hostage rescue like a shooting gallery, opening fully automatic fire on a cargo hold full of hostages and yet never hitting one. Apart from that there isn’t a whole lot that leaves you “waitaminute”ing. The only qualm I had was that with such cool night vision technology, near the end of the movie Stallone goes barreling down a hallway with a flashlight mounted on his gun, very much advertising his presence and position in a supposed stealth infiltration. But apart from minor nitpicks like that, this movie holds together when it comes to blowing things apart. Terry Crews has a shotgun that literally makes things explode when he shoots them, and even though the film tries to explain this, and even does so in a manner that you don’t question in a film of this caliber, it’s just much, MUCH more fun to imagine that Terry Crews has a shotgun that makes things explode. Also, as a little known fact, Terry Crews actually brought Old Spice from his endorsement deal with him onto set, and since that day kicking ass was up by thirty percent.

And despite how much of this movie is about things being taken apart by large explosions, there’s actually as much, if not more fisticuffs being thrown around. Here’s where the casting really shows off because there’s a mix of styles going on in the melee combat. You have Stallone’s barroom brawling, Steve Austin’s wrestling, Jet Li’s kung-fu, Statham’s quick knife-y skills, and then they all mix together at some points.

At the end of it all, The Expendables is a really fun action-packed ride. Despite being ridiculously thin in plot (unlike the necks, of which there are none in this movie) if you look at it as a snowflake instead of just cut up construction paper, you’re going to love watching things go boom. Oh, and the soundtrack is just as kickass.