bill bodkin reviews the explosive sequel…
Plot: The soldiers of fortune known as The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lungren, Terry Crews and Randy Couture) must stop a ruthless terrorist (Jean Claude Van-Damm) from selling the materials to make nuclear weapons to the highest bidder.
If you’re looking for a well-acted, thought-provoking piece of cinema, then The Expendables 2 is not your movie. The dialogue is kinda clunky, the camerawork sometimes is a bit shoddy and the acting isn’t exactly Olivier reborn.
See, what The Expendables 2 is a loud, adrenalized rock ‘n’ roll action flick that will have your inner 13-year-old standing up and screaming “YES!!!”
Everything in the sequel is ramped up and for the most part it’s a good thing. The film is a marked upgrade over the first film, trimming away a lot of the exposition scenes (except for Liam Hemsworth’s early scenes), adding more epic and grandiose shoot-outs and the best thing about the film, it doesn’t take itself so seriously as the first film did. There’s a wink and nod recognition that the film is kinda silly and you can visibly see all the actors are having a helluva time in this film.
As with the first film, the actor that steals the show is Dolph Lungren as the permanently sozzled Swede, Gunner, who we find out in this film is a genius. Yup, he was a Fulbright Scholar and an MIT chemical engineering student who is now a psychopathic killer. These facts only enhance the silliness of Gunner’s persona. The best scene of the entire film is when he tries to flirt with the newest member of the team, Maggie (Nan Yu). He fails miserably and it’s absolute comic gold watching the massive, muscled-up merc look like a hapless romantic.
The much ballyhooed cameos of Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damm, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis live up to the hype as these action icons really sink their teeth into their roles. Chuck Norris probably has fun as the “lone wolf” Booker while Willis plays up his stoic tough guy Church with gusto. Arnold…well he does his patented Arnold schtick, dropping bad quips and blowing things up. He’s probably the weakest of the big three cameos, but it’s still enjoyable. As the villain, literally named Vilain, Jean-Claude Van Damm probably has some of the worst lines, but he’s hams it up so much that you can almost forgive the absurdity.
If you grew up watching action flicks in the 80s and 90s, if the re-blooded sagas of Rambo and Commando were the highlights of your mid-winter Saturday afternoons or if you played army with your friends as a kid, you’ll love The Expendables 2. It’s pure escapist excellence — loaded with armor piercing bullets, strapped with a bunch of grenades and sharpened to a deadly point.
My favorite part was Chuck Norris’s cameo, and how he played on the Chuck Norris memes. That part was solid gold, as for the rest it pretty good, but not great. After seeing it with a couple of coworkers from Dish it piqued my interest in the original, which I missed. Luckily I was able to watch it through my Dishonline account; don’t you love it when you want to watch something and it is just there waiting online. The first one had better references, but the second was a better movie overall I think.