Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
9/4/10
Times
change, genres evolve, and as we grow older, each of us has a sense that
not all these changes are for the better. Take the action genre:
once made up of tentpole blockbusters featuring some of Hollywood's biggest
stars, films built around the crunching of bones have been mostly marginalized,
watered down in worship of the PG-13 rating, and stripped of their high-impact
by a transition from stunts to CGI effects. Sylvester Stallone feels
my pain. In the middle of a 3rd-act renaissance built around the
successful revisiting of his iconic franchises Rocky
Balboa and Rambo, Sly has assembled The Expendables,
the greatest collection of iconic action stars ever collected on one screen.
His cast ranges from massive superstars to beloved direct-to-video faces
and professional athletes, and the movie he and co-writer Dave Callaham
have built for them is a retro treat. Bruising fights, massive explosions,
a sky-high body count and wacky male bonding combine to make The Expendables
the kind of film that will bring tears of joy to people who grew up watching
its particular brand of action. And even if you didn't, it's not
to late to hop on board: The Expendables is everything mindless
cinematic mayhem should be.
The
Expendables are an elite group of mercenaries who do good bad and morally
neutral jobs for the highest bidder. They are leader Barney Ross
(Sylvester Stallone), knife expert Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), martial
artist Ying Yang (Jet Li), massive gun freak Hale Caesar (Terry Crews)
and therapy case Toll Road (Randy Couture). There's a sixth member
as the movie begins, but a drug problem has made Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren)
increasingly unstable and homicidal and Barney shows him the door.
The team takes a new assignment from the enigmatic Mr. Church (Bruce Willis):
venture to the island nation of Vilena and take out dictator General Garza
(David Zayas). Barney and Lee travel there to scout the island and
get the tour from the General's rebellious daughter Sandra (Gisele Itie).
It becomes clear that the real power in Vilena isn't Garza but ex-CIA agent
James Munroe (Eric Roberts) and his henchmen Paine (Steve Austin) and Wickham
(Gary Daniels), and they become convinced that Church is setting them up.
Barney drops the job, but is haunted by the notion of leaving Sandra, who
refused to escape with them, at Munroe's mercy. A talk with former
Expendable Tool (Mickey Rourke) convinces him that there's just one thing
to do: take the team back to Vilena and get her back no matter how
many people they have to kill to do it. But Munroe's got a secret
weapon: Gunner's playing for his team now.
If
the roles were being played by a less iconic collection of performers,
The Expendables would still be entertaining, because Stallone's
got a good sense of the balance of fun, gravitas and excessive violence
that makes this sort of project sing (think Rambo
with a little less carnage and a lot more laughs). But action has
always been more about iconic stars than other genres, and to get so many
from such diverse backgrounds together under one tent makes this something
far more delightful than the simple sum of its parts: The Expendables
is a celebration of its genre, and by extension, a celebration of our love
of it. One's brain ticks off the genre showdowns as they happen:
“OMG, it's Jet Li vs. Dolph Lundgren!” “Holy crap, it's Sylvester
Stallone vs. Steve Austin!” “Statham & Li vs. Gary Daniels?
I'm there!” Stallone even gets the biggest 80's action star of them
all, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to emerge from the Governor's office long enough
to make a delightful cameo in a scene with himself and Willis.
But
if celebrity deathmatches aren't your deal, The Expendables still
packs plenty of massive violence of more conventionally destructive varieties.
Barney and Lee attack Vilena by plane-bound machine gun before returning
to blow up pretty much the entire island in an insanely fiery climax.
A movie like this needs a crazy gun, and Caesar's got one for the ages.
Not only does he fire 200 shots per minute, but has bullets that include
their own self-arming warheads. As in Rambo,
Stallone knows how to use cutting edge effects to make the villains not
only die, but essentially disintegrate before our eyes. I can't explain
to the uninitiated why that's fun, but it IS, dammit!
The
cast is a delight, and not just because they showed up. Stallone
got lost for a long time in the middle of his career in roles as silent
killing machines that didn't play to his strengths, but Barney is a perfect
vehicle to continue his recent hot streak: charismatic but troubled,
deadly but not invulnerable. And he enjoys solid chemistry with Statham,
who brings his usual massive starpower to bear. Li is a hoot as a
character unlike any he's every played: Ying Yang is greedy (always
looking for a bigger cut to share with his made-up family), silly, and
not afraid to play his diminutive stature for laughs. Crews excels
as men high on testosterone, and Hale Caesar (how can you not love these
names?) really means it when he calls his gun his girlfriend. Couture
is goofy fun as the most sensitive of the Expendables, not that he's afraid
to set a man on fire and then continue beating on him while he burns.
Rourke puts on a clinic in his few scenes, including a heartbreaking speech
recounting a story from he and Barney's time in Bosnia that's a real show-stopper.
Then
there's the bad guys: Lundgren was always best when there was a little
evil in him (he's really quite amazing as a psychotic technologically-enhanced
Priest in Johnny Mnemonic), and here he delivers one of his best
performances, balancing a scary unpredictable violence with a genuine affection
for and feeling of betrayal by his teammates. It's always great to
see Roberts surface in an A-movie, and one of the greatest B-movie actors
of his time brings it in a big way as the diabolical ex-fed. He and
Austin compliment each other perfectly, with Roberts' flowery, campy suit-wearing
speechifying playing off Austin's smug brute force to create two bad, bad
men who complete each other. Dexter's Zeyas is quite good
as the dictator who slowly loses his mind as Monroe forces him to choose
between his greed and his blood.
The
Expendables isn't terribly complex: the heroes basically live
large until they decide to blow stuff up and then go overkill all who dare
oppose them. And with the amazing cast and Stallone's rock-solid
action direction, it's just friggin' cool to watch. The stars aren't
as young as they used to be, and the credits tell us stunt doubles were
used liberally. But they're well matched and don't get in the way
of the proceedings. I'm hoping this retro whoop ass fest kicks off
a franchise. As the keeper of the 80's action flame, Stallone needs
a new home base, and we could all use at least one place on the movie schedule
where the answer to the world's problems is still the right combination
of fists, knives, bullets and bombs. You know, cool stuff. |
