Movie Review: The Expendables 2

For this week’s movie review, Daniel “Pinto” Gunderson takes a look at the movie The Expendables 2.

 

 

 

 

(Photo courtesy of Facebook)

The Expendables 2 is one of those movies that have one specific target audience: men. I don’t think the makers of this movie would disagree with that statement. A lot of violence, swearing and a collection of some of the greatest action heroes off all-time have men, young and old, flock to the theaters.

The movie starts off with the Expendables rushing into a village to save a businessman and a fellow mercenary named Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger). After the mission, they fly back home for a little relaxation before their next mission.

When Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) gets back to his home/plane, he finds a visitor waiting for him. It is CIA agent Mr. Church (Bruce Willis). Church needs Ross to take his band of mercenaries to find a plane that was taken down in Albania. The plane contains documents that Church needs recovered.

In order to get the documents, Church sends a woman with the Expendables, Maggie (Yu Nan). Ross agrees and takes his group into the mountains to recover these documents. After getting the documents out of the plane, the group finds that one of their own, Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) has been ambushed by a group of villains.

The leader of these villains, Jean Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme), tells Ross to give him the documents and they will give back Billy. Of course, Vilain doesn’t live up to his end of the bargain and kills Billy instead. After burying Billy, the Expendables take off after Vilain and his group in order to extract revenge.

Fun Fact: Professional tennis player Novak Djokovic filmed a cameo for this movie that was later cut.

What I Liked:
I loved the entire collection of action heroes in this movie. Including the actors I mentioned beforehand, there were Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren and Chuck Norris. All of these men are synonymous with action movies and carry a great amount of clout with them.

To watch this grand collection of action movie stars on the screen together is like walking into a buffet after eating just salad for days. You’re excited, giddy and want to dive right in. Every actor has some specialty when it comes to the movies that they act in and you see them carry out these specialties in this movie.

Most men have sat around a table and said, “What if Rambo, the Terminator and John McClane all were in a movie?” The idea will stop right there because it is almost too much to grasp. Not with this movie, as they put all three of those actors and many more in this action flick.

What I Didn’t Like:
This movie is so cliché, that I hoped the writers would have tried out some new ideas or even new lines for these actors. Unfortunately, you see old catch phrases rehashed by the characters, typically story-lines played out and a Chuck Norris joke to boot.

I am willing to bet any fan of this film would say that was their favorite part. I would have to disagree. It makes the movie too cheesy, which does not help me enjoy the film anymore.

I hesitate to go see sequels because I always wonder how they are going to make the second one better than the first. This one didn’t help itself by going to some things that you could see coming from a mile away.

F = Forget It!
Good action movie, but in the end it falls short of being great. It really bothered me that Chuck Norris showed up playing Chuck Norris in the movie. I didn’t like Schwarzenegger and Willis trading catch phrases from their biggest movies.

Not only that, the writing was pretty bad. The script was your typical action movie, no long lines or big words mixed in. There was just a lot of yelling, swearing and the characters making fun of each other.

I didn’t expect this movie to win an Academy Award, but I did expect it to be more entertaining. Small things that they thought they could get away with actually hurt the movie overall. If you want to rent it, go ahead, but do not waste your money by going to see this in theaters.

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