The Expendables 2

I wasn't a huge fan of 2010's The Expendables, and although I found the sequel slightly better, I wasn't a huge fan of this one, either. At the very least, The Expendables 2 has the common sense not to take itself seriously. At times, it seems like these big action stars are exchanging one-liners and insult jokes more than bullets. It got to the point where I wondered if I was watching an action film, or The Friars Club Roast of Sylvester Stallone.

The gimmick for the sequel is essentially the same as the first movie - Gather a bunch of big name stars from the 80s and 90s, and have them play some middle aged guns-for-hire, who swoop in and kill all the bad guys whenever they're needed. Just like the last film, despite all the big names that appear above the title, only a small handful of them play any actual role in the plot. Sylvester Stallone (who co-wrote the film) and Jason Statham pretty much get all the dialogue. Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, and Randy Couture pretty much exist solely for the action scenes. And Jet Li, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chuck Norris are here for a quick cameo. Norris, in particular, pretty much shows up unannounced, makes his own personal "Chuck Norris" joke, and then walks off. He does return for the big climactic shoot out, but I sense this is only because the studio wanted to use him more than just for a walk on.

The plot: There's a fresh young member to the team of heroes named Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth). After the introductory action sequence, he pulls Stallone aside, and tells him he wants to quit the team. He's young, full of dreams, and is in love with a pretty young nurse. In other words, the kid's doomed. Being full of dreams and love in an action movie pretty much guarantees you'll be the first major character to die. It's right up there with being a cop who is only two days away from retirement. Sure enough, when Stallone and his crew are sent on their next mission to retrieve a computer with the aid of a Chinese woman named Maggie Chan (Nan Yu), they run into the film's villain (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who promptly steals the computer, and kills Billy. This is enough to give our heroes motivation to spend the rest of the movie chasing after the bad guys.

I smiled when I saw Van Damme show up as the bad guy, my mind racing with the possibilities of what sort of villain he would turn out to be. Turns out, he's not much of one. The main distinguishing trait of his character is that he wears sunglasses pretty much at all times, even when he's deep underground in a mine shaft. He doesn't even get to play any sort of role in the movie after he appears. He pretty much disappears until it's time for his climactic fight scene with Stallone. So, why did he want the computer? Apparently, it shows the location of some plutonium that's been hidden in a mine since the Cold War. He says to his lead henchman that he already has some buyers for the plutonium. Who, you ask? He doesn't say. I'm assuming this is to help the film in the overseas market. If he doesn't name what countries are interested in buying from him, then nobody will get offended.

That's pretty much all there is to The Expendables 2. It's mindless, it has a couple of over the top action scenes, and the actors make a lot of jokes and references either to how old they are, or to their past movies. (When Schwarzenegger gives his iconic "I'll be back" line, Bruce Willis responds with, "No, I'll be back. You've been back enough".) There's an audience for this movie, and the people at my screening seemed to be having a lot of fun. I'm just not part of that audience. It's not that I really have anything against the movie. It's made well enough, and it never offends. I just was never thrilled or amused by it. I think it's safe to say that you already know whether or not you're the audience for this movie. If you are, ignore this cranky old critic, and go have fun.

The movie drew some minor controversy earlier this year when it was revealed it would be PG-13, when the last movie was rated-R. Fans protested enough, so the filmmakers went back and added a bunch of fake looking CG blood effects so that the movie could get the harder R-rating. Naturally, this adds absolutely nothing to the film itself. Besides, I see no reason to keep teens away from a movie like this. If anything, it seems like it was tailor made for them.

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