Sunday, September 16, 2012

The Expendables explode again in The Expendables 2

You’ll all remember my rave review of the original The Expendables in 2010. The brainchild of Sylvester Stallone, the movie brought some down on their luck 80’s/90’s action stars together with a few new friends like Jason Statham to kick ass on a made-up tropical island. The movie was to say the least, absolutely fucking fantastic but criticisms were Stallone's skewed direction and that while  that it should have been a tongue-in-cheek cheesy action movie - parts of it took itself a bit too seriously. One scene that was totally out of place was an attempt to introduce a serious emotional depth to Tool, Mickey Rourke’s character while was flawlessly delivered by Oscar nominee Rourke, it had no place in a movie that should have essentially been a balls-out auctioneer where the only dialogue that should have been spoken would use gunfire and explosions as punctuation.

If you’re a misguided individual who thought that the element I described, was what made the movie, you missed the point of the movie itself. The majority of criticism levied against Stallone’s effort was because of that. Thankfully Sly listened to my criticism and got Simon Con Air / The Mechanic West to helm. West proceeded to dispense with any cohesive message like Rourke’s “loss of humanity and atonement” speech replacing the void with a mortality lesson and even more testosterone into the cast just to blow shit up with far less yapping - and naturally it worked.


While the dialog is a regurgitation of all the stars previous roles put together by a group of trained monkeys and at best it’s basic plot makes the A-Team seem as deep as Inception, the sheer goose-bump inducing awesomeness of seeing so many screen-heroes together at once lets you ignore that. I laughed and cried tears of pure joy at the sight of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis waltzing through an airport on screen together literally shooting the heads off bad-guys as they make their way to exact retribution on evil Jean Claude Van Damme while delivering dry one-liners as Chuck Norris supports them from above like some bearded guardian-angel ninja . That is a truly most wonderful moment in cinematic history and the movie itself, one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever seen.

The opening scene of The Expendables 2 was a protracted tantric orgasm of incredible action, death, destruction, dismemberment, vaporisation, guns, rockets, armoured vehicles and of course ridiculous one-liners and the movie rolls like that until the end taking only a few small breathers for exposition but really it was just so your own heart rate would go back to normal or so that you'd not die of adrenaline poisoning. The level of clichéd utterly predictable trademark Hollywood violence, scored once again by Brian Tyler, combined with the sheer nonsense surrounding various action stars appearance [and disappearance] and melded with the artistic beauty that Simon West previously showed us in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was a recipe for true celluloid magic.

Final Verdict: Oh joyful perfection

Colonel Creedon Rating: EXEMPTION GRANTED

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