Monday, September 7th

The Expendables

I first wanted to see The Expendables with my dad, thinking - what better way to celebrate life than watching Sly Stallone and a rag-tag crew battle bad guys in a third world country (because those sets are cheaper to build and probably easier to light ablaze). Also, I may or may not have a weird fascination with Jason Statham - why else would I have watched Crank 2: High Voltage?
The plot of The Expendables isn't hard to follow, unless you're listening to it out of Sly Stallone's mouth. Stuck in a weird permanent sneer, surrounded by slack skin only emphasized by overly waxed brows, I caught maybe every third word that came out of his mouth. But the dialogue was so predictable I didn't really need to hear it. Time has not been kind to Sly. His arms look like Madonna's (muscular), but watching him run down a dock to catch a plane (not a spoiler) looked like an awkward lope. Rambo he is not. Back to the plot: Sly's team gets hired by a "Mr. Church" (freaking Bruce Willis!!!!) to take out the ruler of a small island, Vilena. The General (played by Angel Batista from Dexter) was actually installed by the CIA, I think - again, from Sly's mouth - and is now stuck with an ex-CIA agent American douchebag who wants to sell cocaine. Surprise! But the real surprise is that this group of guys figured that out. Honestly, I almost fell out of my seat when I saw that they used a computer.

The characters are so simple it's ridiculous: no back story, no motivation. The only person whose soul we see is Mickey Rourke, as an ex-team member/incredifast tattoo artist/guitar hand-painter recounting why he got out of the game. He cries, and the drool on his lips as they awkwardly quiver around his words. Jet Li, an ultimate fighter and some other guys round out the crew, who all apparently majored in ammo and knives in a community college of death.

As far as the women go: there were two, and they both had names. Other than that, no dice. Instead they were the topic of awkward conversations about "love" or "feelings" - not that you could believe any of these men is keeping a woman. Did I mention Charisma Carpenter (Buffy! Angel! That ABC Family movie See Jane Date!) is Statham's ex-girlfriend? He comes home, finds her with another guy, sees her later with a bruise on her face and proceeds to kick the new guy's (and his entire pick-up basketball crew's) ass(es) ending with a great line, as he knifes the basketball: "Next time I'll deflate all of your balls."

For all the mocking, I loved The Expendables for making me laugh. It's probably way funnier than Going the Distance, which I almost went to instead. It was awesomely bad in the vein of Starship Troopers and SyFy movies. If only there had been a dragon kingpin...