Sunday Review: The Expendables 2 (2012)

    Geriatric Heroes 2: The Bedpanning.

    Much like Martin Luther King, Sylvester Stallone had a dream. His dream wasn’t quite as noble or world-changing as Mr. King’s, but it did involve bringing people together. With The Expendables, Stallone sought to create a film where the greatest cinematic action heroes of yesterday and today all came together under the same roof - working together as a team of mercenaries to take down the scumbags of the earth. But as these things tend to go (at least in Hollywood, anyway) The Expendables failed to live up to it’s initial premise. With a meandering script and its biggest stars relegated to glorified cameos, the first movie committed the worst possible sin there is: it was a bore to sit through, beginning to end. Writing, directing and starring seemed to take its toll on Stallone, and the whole movie sank under the weight of its expectations. For part deux, however, Stallone relinquishes the director’s chair to shlockmeister Simon West, and while we get a movie no more coherent than the first, we at least get what we paid for in the first place: a fun, rollicking movie where the badasses assembled all get together and do the stuff we want to see them do. Namely, shoot various people into a bloody pulp.

    The smartest thing Stallone and Co. do on this go-round is realize that there’s no need to pad out the running time with such meaningless things as “story” or “character.” The first Expendables suffered greatly from a script drawn out with meaningless character arcs and weak-kneed “commentary” on South American dictators. All of that’s thankfully thrown out the window in favor of a barely-there revenge storyline, and that old reliable standby provides the perfect clothesline to drape all the squib hits and one-liners.

    All the main players from the first one return, some with a little more to do… Some not so much. This is still Stallone’s show, so he gets the most screen time once again. As Barney Ross, Stallone continues to stretch the limits of tackiness with his never-ending supply of skull-encrusted crap. What more is there to say? If you’re looking for an aging badass mercenary, might as well be Sly. The best element of the first movie was Stallone’s chemistry with his costar Jason Statham, who reprises his role as the knife-wielding Lee Christmas. The rapport continues here, as Statham and Stallone continue to bounce nicely off one another. Statham is also the rare cast member not pushing 60, so he gets into quite a few fisticuffs, instead of just standing around shooting things.

    Rounding out the rest of the team are Dolph Lundgren as Gunnar, Terry Crews as Hale Caesar, Randy Couture as Toll Road and Jet Li as Yin Yang. The character of Gunnar steps back into sidelines a bit - all the better for Dolph Lundgren, who gets to yuck it up in some of the film’s funniest bits. We also learn that Gunnar's a bonafide genius, with a degree from MIT and everything (in real life, before Lundgren was an actor, he received chemical engineering degrees from various universities). Terry Crews gets a little more screen time, and ample opportunity to show off his considerable charisma. Jet Li is only in the movie for the first action scene, then promptly disappears - fitting, as in the first Expendables he spent most of the runtime looking like he wanted to murder each and every one of his cast-mates. At least he gets a proper kung fu fight before he goes. And Randy Couture continues to be a black hole of charisma.

     The biggest cop out in the first film was the scene that paired Stallone with his former Planet Hollywood partners Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, in which the three of them got together and… talked. Thankfully that‘s not the case here, and while Willis and Schwarzenegger don’t get that much more screen time, at least here they get in on the action - finally providing action movie fans everywhere with the images they’ve been dying to see for years, such as the glorious scene where Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger stand side-by-side and machine-gun down every living thing in sight. Also getting in on the action is Chuck Norris, who shows up to save the day randomly throughout. It is nice to see Chuck on the big screen again, but he looks so disinterested here it’s kind of painful (not helping matters is the eye-rolling scene where he delivers his own Chuck Norris joke).

    Newcomers Liam Hemsworth and Yu Nan add some welcome new blood into the mix, but it’s Jean-Claude Van Damme who really steals the show. Van Damme has grown tremendously as an actor over the years, and here provides the movie with a competent, nasty villain for our heroes to face. There’s not much to him other than being evil (even his name is “Vilain”), and I’m still not quite sure what exactly his deal is. He and his satanic terrorist goat clan want… uranium? So he can… sell it or something? Whatever - doesn’t matter. JCVD is fucking fantastic here, relishing every moment he has on screen like there‘s no tomorrow. And while he can’t kick quite as high as he used to, watching him deliver a roundhouse on the big screen again is a most welcome sight.

    There’s more than likely going to be an Expendables 3, and while it may continue to improve on the formula, you just have to throw your hands up and realize there is no possible way these movies will ever actually be “good.” There’s just too many egos, too many balls to juggle in the air for any filmmaker to properly sort out. But as any child of the 80’s can tell you, when you’ve got any of the stars listed in the cast, you don’t need to be good. You just need to be fun.