Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Sylvester Stallone
Jason Statham
Jet Li
Dolph Lundgren
Eric Roberts
Randy Couture
Steve Austin
David Zayas
Giselle Itié
Terry Crews
Mikey Rourke
Bruce Willis
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
Directed By:
Sylvester Stallone
I must admit, I'm a fan of Sly Stallone. Unlike his aging action hero counterparts, his attempts of broadening up his horizons during the early years of the millenium have horribly failed, so all he does seems cursed to be violent, depraved and a form of American propaganda. The man is condemned to be a legit action hero by his own inability to act. A real Greek tragedy. Too bad for Stallone's ego, every time he's on screen, it's also very funny. The Expendables, his new product, assembles the complete collection of action heroes from my youth and pits them as a bunch of badass mercenaries and...that's it, who needs a plot going from here? All you need to know is that there are bad guys, they are foreign and that America will liberate the world for the eyes of a beautiful woman (in that case, Giselle Itié).
OK, maybe it won win any awards. But who cares? The Expendables is a movie with the modest goal to entertain the crowd with explosions, gun fights and wits...and it delivers. Also, it's a lot less stupid than given credit for. Remember when I said Mr. Nobody had the pompous goal of applying the laws of entropy to human relationships? Well, somehow, Sly Stallone achieved to make a much more straightforward case for this argument. It's human nature to destroy each other for personal gain,so all you got for almost two hours is acres of destruction for...a girl. Sandra (Itié) is the daughter of General Garza, who sold his nation to an American drug dealer (Eric Roberts). Barney Ross (Stallone) and his team have absolutely no desire to free the people, but ol' Barney feels guilty in front of Sandra's courage, to stay on the island and fight, so he organizes a rescue party for a woman he saw for an afternoon.
Of course, if you take anything in The Expendables seriously, you might get offended. But fans of Stallone like me knows he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so it's all good fun, like laughing at the slow kid. There are images of water boarding, people with funny accents, foreign people who can't shoot. Typical Stallone stuff. There are also surprisingly smart things, like a second degree conversation in between Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who play their own roles for a scene. I never expected reflexivity in that type of movie, but hell, there is.
But it's not where the fun lies. It's in the camaraderie of Barney Ross' hit squad, their cool and stoic attitude in front of human misery, making them apt to change things. The fight scenes, unlike most recent movies are not filmed in that shaky close-up cam, but with wider angles, capturing all the gruesome and the awesome in every scene. As the shaky cam is more "realistic", it's a lot more fun to have a complete portrait of the situation. Stallone goes overboard sometimes with the gruesome injuries and the chopped limbs. Those are supposed to be showstoppers, but he scatters them over the movies like peppercorn on a steak. But it's the only time where I feel he tries too hard. Most of the action sequences flow naturally from awesome to awesomer. The peak of it being probably Randy Couture, running across the battlefield and executing a Superman punch on Steve Austin, that happened to have caught fire. A sight of unforgettable beauty.
Whether you're prejudiced or not against The Expandables, it's a movie bound to find its way into your DVD player. So when it happens, try to sit back, relax and enjoy the immoral spectacle of destruction that Sylvester Stallone has put up for you.
SCORE: 80%
OK, maybe it won win any awards. But who cares? The Expendables is a movie with the modest goal to entertain the crowd with explosions, gun fights and wits...and it delivers. Also, it's a lot less stupid than given credit for. Remember when I said Mr. Nobody had the pompous goal of applying the laws of entropy to human relationships? Well, somehow, Sly Stallone achieved to make a much more straightforward case for this argument. It's human nature to destroy each other for personal gain,so all you got for almost two hours is acres of destruction for...a girl. Sandra (Itié) is the daughter of General Garza, who sold his nation to an American drug dealer (Eric Roberts). Barney Ross (Stallone) and his team have absolutely no desire to free the people, but ol' Barney feels guilty in front of Sandra's courage, to stay on the island and fight, so he organizes a rescue party for a woman he saw for an afternoon.
Of course, if you take anything in The Expendables seriously, you might get offended. But fans of Stallone like me knows he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so it's all good fun, like laughing at the slow kid. There are images of water boarding, people with funny accents, foreign people who can't shoot. Typical Stallone stuff. There are also surprisingly smart things, like a second degree conversation in between Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who play their own roles for a scene. I never expected reflexivity in that type of movie, but hell, there is.
But it's not where the fun lies. It's in the camaraderie of Barney Ross' hit squad, their cool and stoic attitude in front of human misery, making them apt to change things. The fight scenes, unlike most recent movies are not filmed in that shaky close-up cam, but with wider angles, capturing all the gruesome and the awesome in every scene. As the shaky cam is more "realistic", it's a lot more fun to have a complete portrait of the situation. Stallone goes overboard sometimes with the gruesome injuries and the chopped limbs. Those are supposed to be showstoppers, but he scatters them over the movies like peppercorn on a steak. But it's the only time where I feel he tries too hard. Most of the action sequences flow naturally from awesome to awesomer. The peak of it being probably Randy Couture, running across the battlefield and executing a Superman punch on Steve Austin, that happened to have caught fire. A sight of unforgettable beauty.
Whether you're prejudiced or not against The Expandables, it's a movie bound to find its way into your DVD player. So when it happens, try to sit back, relax and enjoy the immoral spectacle of destruction that Sylvester Stallone has put up for you.
SCORE: 80%
