THE EXPENDABLES 2

THE EXPENDABLES 2
Written by Richard Wenk and Sylvester Stallone
Directed by Simon West
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and Jean-Claude Van Damme

Barney Ross: Rest in pieces!

The very notion of THE EXPENDABLES is of very little interest to me. Sure, I watched muscle-led action bloodbaths in my youth (Way to go, Mom!) but very few of those examples (DIE HARD and TERMINATOR 2 come to mind) have actually stuck with me through the years. Still, I was pleasantly surprised by my enjoyment of the first entry in what has now apparently become a franchise. (Nicolas Cage has just signed on for the third installment.) Written and directed by Sylvester Stallone himself, THE EXPENDABLES was both a send-up and an homage to the 80’s action flick. And while the sequel does throw a few more heavyweights into the ring, it does so with very little gusto whatsoever.

There are plenty of explosions, shots fired and blood splatters in THE EXPENDABLES 2, so its wonder to me why it felt so tired most of the time. This could be because Stallone relegated his directing duties to Simon West, who has worked with Jason Statham before (THE MECHANIC) and whose first film was a major action hit, CON AIR. West takes us around the world in THE EXPENDABLES 2, from Nepal to Paris, but yet somehow, each location looks just as drab and uninspired as the last. Even Stallone shows that he doesn’t quite trust the concept when he adds a young man (Liam Hemsworth) and (gasp!) a woman (Nan Yu) to his mixed bag of mercenaries. Nothing against women or younger men but this is such blatant pandering that it’s hard to take any of it very seriously. I understand that films like these are not meant to be taken seriously, but under Stallone’s direction the first time out, you could tell at least he was taking it seriously. It felt like he was trying to prove that he could still do it and he did just that. Now, they’re coasting.

The guns come out blasting from the very start and I had to avert my eyes on a number of occasions because the gore on screen was turning my stomach. In fact, the action is often relentless. And so I’m certain that plenty of action fans will get what they are hoping for in THE EXPENDABLES 2. Personally, when I’m watching two men fight near a helicopter, all I can do is wait for one of them to be splattered against the blades. And I don’t know about you, but I can only watch indiscriminate, ethnically ambiguous foot soldiers drop one after another while missing every single shot they take, for so long before I lose interest. I prefer my action to be original and unexpected, especially when its being doled out by the guys who practically invented the genre. Arnold Schwarzenegger makes his return to the screen and repeats most of his famous one-liners though, so that makes it worth it, right?

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dolph Lundgren for the release of THE EXPENDABLES couple of years ago. Click here to check it out.

Rambo

I thoroughly enjoyed “Rambo” (2008). So sue me. Sometimes you want to put your brain on hold and enjoy a rousing action flick. In “Rambo” the villains are very, very bad and we want to see them get their comeuppance. “Rambo” goes one better by decimating the bad guys in as many a gruesome ways as possible.

This is the fourth Rambo movie to star Sylvester Stallone. Following his very triumphant return to the Rocky Balboa character in, not surprisingly, “Rocky Balboa” (2006), Stallone decided to return to his other iconic character, John Rambo, the killing machine born from the Vietnam War (and an uncaring U.S. populace upon his return home).

In “Rambo” Stallone is grotesquely oversized, like a character in a Tex Avery cartoon. He’s approached to bring some American medical workers, from a church in Colorado, into Burma to bring medicine to villagers suffering from genocide. He refuses to take them in until convinced to do so by the lone female, Sarah (Julie Benz, Darla from the “Angel” TV series). Of course they get captured and Rambo, after being asked by the pastor of the Colorado church (Ken Howard) goes after them.

Though the film is directed and co-written by Stallone, his age is addressed in an off-hand manner. He accompanies some mercenaries to bring the missionaries back. Twenty years ago Rambo would have handled the job by himself. Today, he can’t do it alone. Rambo is still the super solider, but he has the help of the mercenaries.

“Rambo” is incredibly violent, probably the most violent entry in the series. Some have questioned the taste of using the genocide in Burma as the background for an action movie, even including actual news clips of the Burmese situation at the beginning of the film. Genocide is occurring in that part of the world, on a scale I don’t think we have heard about yet. So there’s a primal satisfaction in seeing these animals get what they have been dishing out for years.

Despite the violence, “Rambo” is a beautiful looking film. Filmed on location in the lush, green hillsides of Thailand, Glen MacPherson’s cinematography captures the haunting beauty of terrain.

There’s a lot of fast cutting and hand held camera work in the action scenes, a la the Jason Bourne movies. I may be getting used to the technique, because it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. The final 15 minutes is a veritable orgy of action, flying bullets and exploding limbs. But Stallone is a masterful director of action, and we always know where the protagonists are in relation to each other. There’s no confusion about who’s shooting at who, or from which direction the danger is coming from. So many contemporary action movies are more concerned with the cutting and the size of the explosions, they lose focus of the action’s geography. Not here.

Brian Tyler contributes an effective score, and I was heartened to see Jerry Goldsmith’s “First Blood” theme used in part of the opening and closing credits. It was like hearing a new Goldsmith score at the movies. It was a nice touch.

Looking forward to the fifth Rambo movie.

Rating for “Rambo”: Three stars.