I love my family dearly. I am unbelievably lucky to have been born into a fun, caring home that loves me in spite of my many bizarre foibles. Sometimes though, they let me down.
One such example was a couple of weeks ago when I suggested we go to the pictures as a family to see the new Pixar film ‘Brave’. The response I got was, “Can we go and see Expendables 2 instead?” It’s that old thing; I wasn’t ‘angry, just disappointed’ in them.
In the Expendables 2 we re-join Barney ‘The Boss’ Ross (Sylvester Stallone) with his team of misfits; Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), Toll Road (Randy Couture) and new recruit Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) as they are hired to do daring overseas missions. After rescuing a Chinese Businessman and Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger) from a gang in Nepal, Ross is given an assignment from Church (Bruce Willis) to retrieve something from an airplane that has crashed in Albania. Church insists that the group take Maggie (Yu Nan) a Chinese computer genius when they go and make sure whatever is on the plane doesn’t fall into the hands of Jean Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme).
What can you say about ‘Expendables 2’? Seriously… what can you say?! The thing is totally review-proof.
One reason it’s hard to say anything about ‘Expendables 2’ is because it clearly doesn’t give a flying fuck. It KNOWS that the plot is irrelevant, it KNOWS that the characters have got the most ridiculous names ever (Jean Vilian… he’s the bad guy and his surname is VILIAN FFS!) and it KNOWS it’s as shallow as a puddle. It knows all this, yet carries on regardless and I’m not sure that there isn’t some kind of demented genius in that.
One serious bad point: distinct lack of Jet Li. This makes me sad because I love Jet Li and his bizarre double act with Dolph Lundgren amused me greatly in the first film.
The movie knows its ace cards though and plays them very well indeed. Despite his Chinese comedy partner going AWOL Lundgren is great. His shambling, alcohol abused Gunner is brilliant and probably my favourite thing in the whole film.
Jason Statham irrefutably gets the best fight scenes, all of which he carries out so well it’s practically balletic (albeit ballet with automatic weapons). One downside of all the big shooting, fast stabbing action however, is some appalling CGI blood splatter. It’s so bad it’s shameful.
It’s a marked improvement on the uninspiring bad guy of the first film. Insane moniker aside, Van Damme does ‘bat-shit crazy, knife wielding villain’ quite well. It’s also nice to see someone that matches our ragtag band of heroes from a ‘legend status’ point of view. I don’t know about you but I don’t think Eric Roberts cut it in the first film. The final showdown between Vilain and Ross also serves as a reminder that, at one point, they were two of the biggest action stars around. Van Damme is a welcome addition.
I really don’t know what to say about the jokes. The comedy seems to fall into two brackets; cringe-worthy puns and references to films in which the biggest three actors have previously appeared. I didn’t laugh at the cheesy lines or any of the references (on the contrary, some of them actually made me wince) what I did laugh at was the madness of it all. Prime example being the fact that, despite being referred to as ‘the Lone Ranger’, the theme tune to ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ plays every time Chuck Norris is on screen. Also, as I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, there is a reference to the now infamous ‘Chuck Norris Facts’. It’s bizarre, hysterical and I’m pretty sure I heard the distant sound of the internet imploding as I sat watching it.
Part knowing parody, part unintentional hilarity and 100% excessive madness, I really don’t know what anyone can say about ‘Expendables 2’. It wears its two-dimensional storyline like a badge of honour and for that I kind of want to commend it. I laughed, I groaned, I cringed but at least it got a response out of me unlike so many other action films of recent years that have bored me to tears. It has no delusions of grandeur and for an hour and 45 minutes I was entertained, although maybe not entirely in the way the film makers intended.
Now let’s have some…
Reasons to be Cheerful :-)
1. Billy Crystal has been talking about ‘Monster’s University’! I’m so excited! I went to see ‘Brave’ the other day and it made me fall in love with Pixar all over again.
2. Steven Moffat has released the keywords for series three of Sherlock! Last year we had ‘Woman, Hound and Fall’, this year’s words are ‘Bow, Wedding and Rat’. Harder to decipher than last time but that’s not going to stop me trying! The game is afoot!
That’s all for today!
Goodbye till next time :-)
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