The Expendables 2: ***/*****, or 7/10
Tony
Scott may have jumped off a bridge, thus leaving the movie industry
with one less capable action director, but fortunately there's still
some of those left. Simon West for example. Though generally not as
well known, nor as experienced in shooting pure action judged from
the number of action films in his repertoire, with movies like Con
Air (1997), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and the recent
Jason Statham flick The Mechanic (2011), it's far from
unreasonable to state the guy has some knowledge of things that go
boom. So when Sylvester Stallone decided to stick to writing and
acting while letting go of the director's chair that seemed to fit
him well enough for his ultimate action movie The Expendables
two years ago, hiring West for the job wasn't the most illogical
decision. However, judging from the final product, Stallone would
have done well to encourage West to get more innovative, considering
The Expendables 2 improves little upon its predecessor: a
solid action movie is West's contribution to the franchise, but
considering the sheer number of renowned action stars participating
in Stallone's second ode to the action genre as a whole, the sequel's
approach to things feels like a routine is being established instead
of new routes being taken. That routine apparently revolves around
action stars getting together and shooting people up.
The
movie's main focus seems to be the expansion of bit parts of
characters from the first film played by screen icons Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Bruce Wilis, plus the introduction of several new
characters played by muscle movie veterans Jean-Claude Van Damme and
Chuck Norris to the already impressive line-up of (near) legendary
action stars from the first film, to further support Stallone's
hypothesis that old dogs can still pull off worthwhile tricks that
manage to draw huge audience numbers. His point was well proven by
the success of The Expendables, making The Expendables 2
feel more like an obligatory Hollywood cash-in than a sincere attempt
to outdo what was done before for the audience's entertainment.
Nevertheless, The Expendables 2 at least succeeds in
delivering ample amounts of gun fights and screen violence paired to
often successfully timed moments of humor and referencing the action
classics the movie means to pay homage to, which is what most
spectators will expect, and what they will get.
The
movie starts in medias res, as we follow Stallone's pack of
mercenaries – and it's really Stallone's, since few people will
ever remember the names of the characters after leaving their
theaters, considering they are played by so many larger-than-life
people – on a job rescuing a wealthy Chinese entrepreneur from the
clutches of nameless Nepalese thugs, in a spectacular raid on their
heavily fortified facility involving heavy machinery and man sized
artillery, opening the film with a huge bang as our heroes shoot down
and blow up endless rows of antagonists in an expected and desired
orgy of gun violence, followed by an adrenaline rushed jungle river
chase (which saw one stunt man dead and another one crippled) ending
in a decently sized explosion to round things up. If you were
wondering, the movie is rated R where the previous installment was
only PG-13, thus allowing the director more freedom to insert
appropriate levels of gore and blood into the film, all for the
better. At this point the film has only run for about 15 of its 103
minutes, so it takes a moment to re-establish the characters,
introduce some new ones and specify their upcoming mission, plus
giving the viewers a much needed moment to catch their breath.
Centerpiece
of the first half of The Expendables 2 is rookie team member
Billy the Kid (played by Liam Hemsworth: despite his role in The
Hunger Games, this is really his first action film, making him
feel as much out of place in this movie judging from his experience
as an actor as his character feels out of place on the team for his
young age), protegée to team leader Barney Ross (Stallone, mumbling
his lines as unintelligibly as usual), who despite his excellent
sniper abilities decides this is not the life for him and tells his
mentor he means to retire soon. However, when the band of extremely
broad shouldered brothers find themselves with a new assignment,
courtesy of shady CIA operative Church (Wilis), who they owe some
money after the events of the first film, to retrieve a brief case
from a downed plane in Albania, Billy's loyalty compels him to join
them. They are also accompanied by Maggie, an expert on Church's
payroll: Chinese actress Yu Nan gets the seemingly thankless job of
representing girl power amidst the humongous amounts of testosterone
going around, but manages to keep up surprisingly well, giving the
occasional witty rebuttal when confronted with near sexist remarks
from her new team members. The brief case is easily found, but soon
lost to the villain of the piece, a bad guy simply named 'Jean
Vilain', played enthusiastically by Jean-Claude Van Damme despite his
character's feeble screen name: fully in tone with Stallone's
straightforward way of thinking, why bother with intricate
designations when you can call a spade a spade? Vilain makes it clear
he's not to be messed with and lives up to his name when he takes the
team's prize and leaves Billy dead, thus setting the stage for the
veterans' quest for vengeance.
Revenge
alone is too ignoble an objective for such a notable group of
exemplary action stars, so the plot raises the stakes by revealing
the brief case contained the exact location of a former Soviet depot
in Bulgaria that houses five tons of plutonium Vilain intends to sell
despite its threat to the world's balance of power. To make him even
more of a ruthless bastard, he utilizes slave labor to dig out the
plutonium, so the Expendables' mission is to free the slaves, secure
the goods and avenge their comrade. In truth it matters little what
the exact mission is, so long as the stage is set for a large string
of overly loud gun fights, some neat display of martial arts and
general fisticuffs and a decent amount of one-liners mixed in, most of
them acknowledging the actors' former entries into the action genre
(with the most obvious and funniest remarks referring to the Die
Hard and Terminator franchises). In a moderately epic,
drawn out conflict staged at an air port the team of good guys, now
joined by Wilis, Norris and Schwarzenegger, square off against the
legion of bad guys, culminating in a vicious mano-a-mano
confrontation between Stallone and Van Damme, kicking each other's
teeth in like two Roman gladiators. Needless to say who wins the day,
since The Expendables 3 has already been widely announced.
In the
middle of all the action, the main attractions of The Expendables
2 regrettably also turn out to be its main flaws. Since the
success of the first movie was based mostly around the large number
of famous action stars getting together for a
mother-of-all-action-films flick, The Expendables 2 clearly
needed to outdo its predecessor by gathering some more noted
heavyweights to join the fun. The full line-up of action stars of the
film now consists of Stallone, Van Damme, Wilis, Schwarzenegger,
Norris, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Randy Couture and
Terry Crews and with so many vets gracing the screen, it'll come as
no surprise not everybody gets an equal chance to shine. Li, an
established team member in the first film, exits the movie
immediately after the opening mission has been completed, not to be
seen or even mentioned again, while Couture, Crews and Norris are
left with little to do during the whole piece, and Lundgren largely
has been reduced to comic relief (which thankfully he pulls off
well). It makes you wonder why the movie needed an action virgin like
Hemsworth at all, considering his role could have gone to one of the
older and more accomplished actors, thus offering a chance to make
the narrative feel more poignant upon the moment of his death. The
same can be said for Yu Nan's role (though it's laudable West and
Stallone provided the opportunity for her big break on the
international market), which could also have gone to one of the other
actors in favor of balancing the existing amount of characters
properly instead of relegating them to the side line in favor of even
more characters joining the stage. Wilis and Schwarzenegger are no
longer restricted to playing mere cameos as they were before but are
finally offered the chance to get their hands dirty: they do so
vigorously, but their status as (former?) A-list superstars is mostly
applied to referencing their most memorable movies more often than
feels appropriate, at times making their presence feel forced despite
generating a few more laughs. At least Van Damme gets the opportunity
to explore Vilain's savage villainy in much more detail, making his
climactic final fight with Stallone work on the intended levels. As
was the case with the predecessor, at the heart of The Expendables
2 still lies the camaraderie between Stallone and Statham, with the
pair of them exchanging both witticisms and drama, acknowledging the
fact the torch has successfully been passed from Stallone's age of
action stars to Statham's more recent generation, with relentless
love and understanding for the genre and its conventions clearly driving
the both of them. The more things change, the more they stay the same
after all, and both sides of the coin are amply represented in West's
The Expendables 2 as much as they were in Stallone's own The
Expendables.
The
Expendables 2 is a double confirmation of the age gold adage that
more of a good thing isn't necessarily better. First, it's good to
see more familiar faces from past glory again, but if the talent we
all know to be underlying said faces remains underused, little has
been accomplished. The movie is running for an entertaining 103
minutes, but could have benefited from another 15 or 20 minutes
fleshing out the likes of Norris, Couture, Crews, Li and Lundgren
some more, especially considering that, second, like the first
Expendables film, the movie still feels lacking something in
the action department, even though that sounds incredible. Fact is,
the first 15 minutes of the film basically say it all, showcasing the
Expendables' efficiency as a team to great effect – with each team
member getting the opportunity to display his fighting skills more or
less equally – in an ever expanding rollercoaster ride of an action
sequence, with a big explosion to tie it all up. The rest of the
movie simply can't live up to this opening, despite throwing in more
stars, more gags and more action, and even more plot (which makes you
consider just how much, or how little, of that is needed in a film
like this). Though it still entertains tremendously, the audience
keeps waiting for a staggeringly huge motherfucking explosion that
never comes.
Director
West can't be blamed for his film's shortcomings, which simply lie in
the movie's changing intentions as it finds itself transformed into a
franchise trilogy – which it didn't start out to be – changing
from paying homage to past glory, to a series of films revolving
around ever greater numbers of action stars joining each other in
referencing eachother's oeuvre as they dispatch large scores of bad
guys. With The Expendables 3 already in the pipe line,
Stallone would do well to take a closer look at the direction the
franchise has taken and the effect this has had on both the
audience's expectations and the overall coherence of the films
proper, before signing on more colleagues the likes of Nicolas Cage
and Steven Seagal to further relive the good ol' days. After all, the
audience is not expendable, and it's still craving that giant
stupendously big-ass explosion...
And
watch the trailer here:
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