Author: yanaminicus

Broken City (2013)

The City is New York, though this was shot in New Orleans, and the Broken thing is Billy Taggart, a NYPD detective who shot a kid in the projects under murky circumstances. Was it self defense, or vigilante cop murder? That gets cleared up later but it really doesn’t matter. The real story is that it’s 7 years later and Billy is a private eye, catching infidelities through the window and having trouble paying his bills.

Enter Russell Crowe as the charmingly filthy Mayor, and a small role for Griffin Dunne as Hizzonner’s real estate mogul crony. There’s a deal going down for billions, pushing pesky poor people out of the projects to make room for spacious condos. And where there’s billions sloshing around in New York, there will be politicians. Naturally, this all happens during the end stretch of the mayoral election.

So it’s part detective story and part political thriller. In this kind of thing there’s hired muscle, there’s double-dealing aides, and as always, there is a patsy. Billy’s girl has a slight part to play in explaining why he’s about to go off the leash, but there isn’t really much else to give depth to the character. One car chase, one short fight scene, a couple dead guys in the street. The action here is not the action, but the plot. Of that, it’s fairly standard gumshoe pulp but some good performances peppering the film. Not remarkable, but not a bad movie.

Rating and info here…

Broncos-Panthers Supper Bowl Chow [sic]

The skeleton of this recipe is from another blog, with [my tweaks and advice in brackets like this]. It turns out in the colors for this year’s Bowl teams if you use blue corn chips, and it’s one of those rare snacks which is really yummy but also, through no fault of its own, very healthy snackfood. Don’t tell anyone this! From twopeasandtheirpod.com:

Black Bean and Quinoa Enchilada Bake

Yield: Serves 8-10
Prep Time: 15 minutes [this is a lie]
Cook Time: 35 minutes [this is also a lie]
Total Time: 50 minutes [duh, you know what this is]

[My advice: should take under an hour to get this into the oven, then 30 minutes baking, so figger 50 minutes of activity and 30 minutes of relative leisure, and 20 minutes of futzing around, so 100 minutes total]

Ingredients:

1 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed
2 cups water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalapeno, seeds and ribs removed,diced [*]
1 red pepper, seeds removed, diced
1 orange pepper, seeds removed, diced
1 cup corn frozen kernels [sic]
Juice of 1 small lime
1 teaspoon ground cumin [*]
1 tablespoon chili powder [*]
1/3 cup chopped cilantro
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 (15 oz) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups red enchilada sauce [*, and does it even come in other colors?]
2 cups shredded Mexican cheese

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9×13 baking dish with cooking spray and set aside.

[My advice: skip the spray and just use a glass baking dish, then when it’s done just run a spoon around the edge]

2. Add quinoa and water to a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil for 5 minutes. Turn the heat to low and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until water is absorbed. Remove from heat and fluff with a fork. Cover quinoa and set aside.

[My advice: rinse quinoa in a wire mesh strainer under cold water for a minute or two before cooking]

3. In a large skillet, heat the tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion, garlic, and jalapeno. Saute until softened, about 5 minutes. Add in the peppers and corn. Cook for about 3-4 minutes. Add the lime juice, cumin, chili powder, and cilantro. Stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

[My advice: green peppers work just fine, but i do like the color of the final dish with the red/orange peppers and the black beans. Use blue tortilla chips to scoop this snack, and it turns out very appropriate for a Broncos-Panthers SB]

[My advice: skip the salt and pepper, just use 15-20 pickled jalapeno rings and chop them into bits… those will contain salt already. Black pepper + jalaps just clash in my mouth, yours might be different, though]

[My advice: enchilada sauce already has cumin and chili powder, so this recipe is easier if you skip them here and just make your own sauce (way cheaper). My recipe for enchilada sauce follows…]

4. In a large bowl, add the cooked quinoa and black beans. Add the sauteed vegetable mixture and stir to combine. Pour in the enchilada sauce and stir. Add 1/2 cup shredded cheese. [Stir more]

[My advice: use mild cheddar instead of “Mexican cheese” (queso), for more flavor and better gooiness for chip dipping]

[My advice: put 1 cup of the cheese into the mixture and 1 cup on top, not 1/2 cup inside and 1+1/2 on top. Holds together better for chip scooping, specially with cheddar]

5. Pour the black bean and quinoa mixture into the prepared baking dish. Top with remaining shredded cheese. Cover the pan with foil. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove foil. Bake an additional 10 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and edges are bubbling. Remove from the oven, and let cool for 10 minutes. Garnish with toppings, if desired. Serve warm.

[My advice: if you did like i said and adjusted the cheese amounts inside versus on top, then adjust these baking times too. 23 minutes under foil, then 7 minutes uncovered, instead of 20/10]

Toppings: Sliced green onions, avocado slices, sour cream, optional

Note-this recipe freezes well! If you need the recipe to be gluten-free make sure you use a gluten-free enchilada sauce.

[My advice: don’t garnish with anything, screw gluten-free enchilada sauce unless you have Celiac Disease, serving at room temp is just as good as warm (just not cold), and scoop it with unsalted tortilla chips, because you’ll never know the difference here.]

[My advice: If you have any left over, then tomorrow, nuke it a little to soften it up, get some round soft flour tortilla discs, spread this stuff in a stripe across the middle of the tortilla, lay some chicken down on top, fold ’em up and nuke them (seam-side down) to warm them up. Sour cream as a dipping sauce works great here.]

[And final advice: yes it’s really tasty, but it is also really good for you, so eat as much as you want. Only the cheese is even halfway a health concern, but the beans and quinoa will strip the cheese’s cholesterol out of you automatically. Pig the hell out on this, no guilt.]

As promised, my stupidly easy enchilada sauce:

If you make this, skip the cumin and chili powder in the recipe above. This makes a little more than you need for the Enchilada Bake, but this stuff is good on anything, scrambled eggs even. Try it, it’s good on anything. Except pancakes.

* 1/4 cup olive oil in a skillet. Heat it up on high.
* Add 2 tblsp flour (all-purpose flour) + 1/3 cup chili powder. Heat this on medium for a few minutes until the flour turns brown, stir it a lot so it doesn’t burn.
* Add one 8-oz can of tomato sauce, 1+1/2 cups water, 2 tsp cumin, a big pinch of garlic powder and a big pinch of onion salt. Two pinches each, if you have small fingers.
* Stir it all, heat on medium until it thickens a little. You want it thick like tomato soup, not tomato juice.

Emeril says to use tomato paste and 2 cups of chicken stock instead of the tomato sauce and water. Rachael Ray says to add slivered almonds and a cinnamon stick… but then it’s not a stupidly easy enchilada sauce anymore, now is it? Skip the fancy stuff, simpler is gooder.

Gangster Squad (2013)

Los Angeles, barely post-war, it’s 1949 and Mickey Cohen is a gangster on his way up, a rise fueled by particular violence which we get an inkling of in the opening minutes, where Mickey (Sean Penn) has an emissary from the Chicago mob torn in half, fully on camera. Ewww. But it’s a gangland drama, and it’s made in 2013, so let’s not skimp on the gruesome violence.

Of course this serves as our motivation to see Mickey get what he’s got coming, and it comes in the form of a deeply undercover team of LAPD white-hats who report to nobody and answer to nothing but a smoking gun. Based on the true story of how the mafia was turned back from inroads into LA, this flick is half detective thriller and half vigilante rampage. In the historical sense, this is the story of how the mob only made it as far West as Las Vegas, and this nipping of the buds of organized crime saved, in the end, the whole West Coast from turning into Chicago or New York.

Since it’s 1949, the film is full of glorious old cars, Packards and Hudsons and De Sotos, all curvy bodies with flat windows and no radios. Speaking of curvy bodies, Emma Stone turns in a great performance as expected, as the moll with the gams and a sweet streak, and she’s lovingly introduced as a “tomato”. Ahh, the 1940s.

Since it’s the 40s, the soundtrack has lots of nice jumps from Hoagy Carmichael, Pee Wee King and Stan Kenton, and we even get an actress portraying Carmen Miranda. One gripe is that not much thought was applied to marrying the music to the video, and few of the vintage songs go on past a few bars. There is a ton of music which would have been current on the radio in 1949 and applicable to our story, but this score seems to have been assembled in isolation of the film production, and by someone bereft of a broad knowledge of 1940s pop. The one bright spot in the score is using Peggy Lee’s “Bless You” in its entirety as the credits roll.

The ending of the movie is too quick and pat, with little feeling of real denouement, but otherwise the story is good and the acting more good than poor. A great span of supporting cast: Michael Pena, Giovanni Ribisi, Nick Nolte, and Anthony Mackie all turn in good roles, and the leads (Penn, Brolin, Gosling and Emma) all do a fine job. Josh Brolin is wooden, but that’s on purpose, that’s why he was cast as the main good guy, he’s what we expect from him, the grizzled toughie with a gold heart.

A pretty good movie overall. Period piece but not drenched in itself, great pacing of the action, and a range of heroes easy to root for and baddies we’re glad to see get shot. It’s The Untouchables redone, 30 years later and set 15 years later, and it was about time someone flattered that great movie. I recommend watching this.

Rating and info here…

Kill The Irishman (2011)

Gangster drama about Danny Greene, the true story of his rise and fall through the ranks of the Cleveland underworld. Always an outsider because he wasn’t Italian, but tougher than nails and hard as a brick, Danny was. His bid to take over the Cleveland mob in the middle of the 1970s sparked a war, with hundreds of mobsters dead and dozens of bombings ripping apart warehouses, restaurants and long dark luxury sedans.

It didn’t end until the New York families finally took Greene out, on the 10th try. But the aftermath was nationwide, leading to the downfall of most of America’s crime families, once the feds could no longer look the other way after hundreds of killings. The ripple effect was a wave of rooting out corruption within the police departments in several large cities, and left the traditional mafia so weakened that the door was opened in the 1980s for other organizations to move in, including less respectable and far more vicious gangs of Jamaicans, Russians and Chinese.

So on one hand this is the story about the last of the breed, the dapper dons and sitdowns among capos. On the other hand, it’s the story of how their world ended and a cautionary tale about being careful what you wish for. The old mafia was violent and greedy, yes, but cracking them down meant a new mob with less self control and zero incentive to work anything out with gentlemens agreements among themselves. And then someone invented smokeable cocaine, so the 1980s got real violent in gangland.

There’s a dabble of Danny’s lifestory outside of business, with the wife who left him because, well because he was a gangster. And a new girlfriend, played by the beautiful Laura Ramsey who fills out all those slinky rayon 70’s clothes very well. In the end it’s a pretty good slice of seedy Cleveland and gritty rustbelt gangsters blowing each other up willy nilly. And there’s Christopher Walken. What’s not to like about that?

More info here…

The Hot Potato (2011)

Reminds me of “Morons In Outer Space”, but these ones didn’t even have to leave Earth. Based on a true story, which is right scary, mate. The titular tuber is not a vegetable, but instead a lump of metal about the size of a grapefruit. It weighs about 60 pounds, because it’s made of the metal uranium. First time you watch this, it’s a mystery briefly, but the second time you can’t help but cringe when you see the things these idiots do to the potato.

Working-class Brits are the main cast, so the accents and slang get a bit heavy, but not too difficult to suss out what they’re on about. Just remember that “Old Bill” means the coppers, which means the police. Danny (Jack Huston) finds a shiny box when a weapons research lab blows up, and lugs it round to the metal salvage shop of his mate Kenny (Ray Winstone). It’s 1969, so the Cold War is in full swing, so there are a lot of shady and spicy people interested in getting hold of the potato.

Israelis want to make atom bombs, various gangsters want to make money, and everyone involved makes an ass of themselves through a combination of thuggery and stupidity. Thus, calling this a comedy. No pointedly uproarious laughlines, but generally funny throughout and all the characters are drawn as caricatures.

The plot winds across half a dozen European cities, as every operator in this farce chases the potato in the most inept manner possible. Great fun, engaging cast of small-time hoods and not-quite innocent regular folks caught up in a web of international cloak-and-dagger. And this really happened, yipes.

More info here…

The Monuments Men (2014)

Based on the book by Robert Edsel, about how the Nazis looted Europe of anything of value not bolted down, and many things which were. And about the group of artnerds who got a lot of the stuff back. When this came out the critics fawned over it. An all-star cast, a story about hi-falutin’ stuff, and for once, there was a war movie which no intelligensian can be too snobby to hate.

It’s a true story, or the book is anyway, and the cast really is outstanding. Bill Murray and Bob Balaban teasing each other is the running gag and it’s perfect. There’s even a parting shot of them ripped straight out of Casablanca, as in a beautiful friendship beginning. Star, narrator, producer, and director is Clooney, and he even worked on the script too. Matt Damon turns in another great role. John Goodman is a master at work. Cate Blanchett, nuffsaid?

So why does the movie fall so far short? Artsy critics were quick to praise this one, we already mentioned how it’s a war movie all their own, but it seems like no one got past that to evaluate the film on its own cinematic merits. Beautifully shot, Clooney is a fine director, there is nothing technically wrong with the movie. So why does it feel hollow?

Like a documentary but dramatized, and light on information because it’s a drama, not a documentary. The root trouble with this movie is covering too much story with too little information. A finer scalpel running over the book would have found the spine of a simpler plot, isolated it, and built a new creature around it. That’s what screenwriters do.

You can tell that someone attempted to do it with Edsel’s book. Focusing the plot on the Ghent Altarpiece and the Madonna of Bruges was a stab at boiling the plot down. Unfortunately, these two stories (where there should be one) happen in the beginning and in the last 15 minutes, and the intervening time is a series of anecdotes, disjointed vignettes of nostalgia.

Very entertaining anecdotes, to be sure. The Murray/Balaban feud is great and putting John Goodman into combat is bound to be hilarious. But then throw in an almost love story, and a dozen anecdotes about nothing more than how tough it was to invade Germany, and the whole middle hour of the movie turns to jelly. Bookending scenes with FDR and Truman are exemplars of how the movie skips around from thing to thing, jamming in as many odd loose bits of the book as it can.

It could have been a tight story about a few guys chasing Nazi plunder across Europe, with a quality side-story about unfulfilled desire in Paris in April. On one hand, the plethora of A-listers almost ensures that the plot will be diluted. At 1:51 the movie is plenty long, but there’s just too much starpower to contain. All the cast are brilliant, but none of them get to shine.

Would have made a great comedy, specially with this ensemble. A movie about the relationship between Damon and Blanchett would make a great movie. Or a movie about this group hunting down one specific trove of artworks, done as a combo of detective-movie and war-movie would be a fun ride. But this movie tries to be all those films at once. Predictable results.

In the end, it’s good entertainment with a tiny amount of culture sprinkled over it, but no meaty plot to bite into. Worth watching for the laughs, but like the ancient American proverb about Chinese food, you’ll be hungry again soon afterwards.

More info here…

Captain Phillips (2013)

Pretty long movie but a good story, and it really happened, despite all the legalese denials at the end of the credits. Keeps the tension up for over two hours, casting real Somalis as the pirates was a genius move, and Tom Hanks does his part like a veteran A-lister. Despite a whole lot of violence, there’s no actual death until the final unraveling.

Taking place onboard various ships, the running theme is claustrophobia and this reaches a fever pitch as the whole thing comes to a head in a pretty tough but very tiny little lifeboat. Early on, the foreshadowing machine plays a “special security announcement” when Cap’t Phillips arrives at the airport, just after he tells Mrs Phillips “everything’s gonna be OK.” So we know that not everything will be OK, since there’s two hours of movie left.

The devilish thing this movie does, and the main reason a mass of critics circle-jerked over it when it came out, is that this film takes extra time to make sure we get the story from both points of view: the pirates and the piracy victims. Because we know what happens, because we watched the news in April of 2009, we know the SEALs save the day, but by the time it comes, this crafty flick has you caring whether the pirates live or die.

A straight action flick has you accepting that the bad guys must die simply because they dared to point a Kalashnikov at the hero. In this one, the bad guys are still painted bad, and you’re made to feel they get what they’ve got coming, but the film also slips in a bit of pathos. You’re sad to see the waste of life but buy into the idea that these punks really have nothing better to do, and you are prodded to think of that as the true crime. Don’t fall for it.

There are some fun lines in the script, like the pirate leader Muse (Barkhad Abdi) saying early in the pirate attack that he wants to go to America. And he did. And he’s going to be in prison a long time. Arrr, matey, you stupid douchebag.

More info here

The Expendables 3 (2014)

Again, no Steven Seagal. Otherwise, you know why we are here: old action movie stars give another go around the mulberry bush. Terry Crews skips most of this one, and Arnold never gave him back that gigantic shotgun, but Terry does find a good replacement personality-weapon: a rotary machine gun of the type usually found on the nose of an attack helicopter. Naturally he needs a new catch-phrase: “Time to mow the lawn.”

But with Mr. Crews out, we need another black guy, and Wesley Snipes does a great job as “Doc”. Catch-phrase? “Oh Sally!” We get Jet Li back, but only briefly, and Harrison Ford takes over the role where we’ve seen Bruce Willis for the first two movies. But why stop there? Let’s make some calls and add Mel Gibson, Antonio Banderas, Ronda Rousey and Kelsey Grammer.

Yes, Kelsey Grammer. Frasier. He doesn’t kill anyone.

Per The Formula, we have a bad guy with a private army and the Geezer Squad has to do something about that. Something involving planes trains and automobiles, all of which explode because, per The Formula, everything in this movie is made of kerosene. Even brick buildings are made of kerosene. But there is a twist to The Formula this time, Sly fires the old E-Boys and takes on a whole new crew of 20-somethings.

Obviously, the young pups end up in trouble and the franchise’s staple cast has to blast their way in and out. By this time, Arnold is no longer Governor of California, so his role is larger this time. Willis as the angry blackmaily CIA contact was probably pissing someone off, so Ford takes over as the CIA guy, a kinder and suaver one, but he keeps the central thesis alive: 80s movie action hero oldster goes back to battle.

And what a battle it is. This one’s combat crescendo is the best of the series so far, about 20 minutes of nonstop chopsocky, stabsocky, and gunsocky. Also, lots of people get hit with guns, more than usual this time. There’s tanks and a nice miniature airwar, although it’s uncertain how competent the opposing army is, since they open up with artillery *after* sending their infantry in. Not exactly West Pointers in Azmenistan, the fictional mashup of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan where our boss badguy Mel Gibson is holed up.

Same as the last movie, this is filmed mainly in Bulgaria, and there is one location which is stupendous. It’s a river of boulders cascading down a valley, like an avalanche in freezeframe, or a raging flood suddenly bereft of water. Bulgaria production also means that every person in the hundreds of crew and extras has a surname ending with “-ov”. And, as a side benefit, this is set in a fictional Central Asian former Soviet SSR, and Bulgaria has plenty of decaying buildings with Cyrillic letters all over them.

Rousey is not that great of an actress, but gets better as the movie progresses, so there’s hope for her in Hollywood, and her combat scenes are very good. Snipes turns in a great performance, although with such a packed cast he doesn’t get as much flicktime as he deserves. That can be said for nearly everyone in the movie. Foundational problem with this movie is that there are too many stars. Not a crack in the foundation, because we are looking at an action flick, so nobody’s character really suffers from underdevelopment. It’s just that there are some great performances which would have benefited from more exposure to the lens.

Gibson’s role is good and he inhabits it competently, and Antonio Banderas is an absolute riot here. Banderas might actually have the most lines, after Stallone, and that’s likely because the film editor recognized that Banderas was turning in an excellent performance from start to finish, playing the comic relief, but 100% in on the action. Antonio Banderas is the best actor in this movie. Cripes, i never thought i’d say that.

Doesn’t happen often, but sometimes a second sequel is the best of the bunch. After seeing three, i’d say the director was better in #2, the cast is better in #3, and the story was better in #1. And the score was far better in the second one. By this movie, we have largely left the classic rock behind, and that’s a real pity. Someone got their hands on this edition of Expendables and decided to try and make it into a movie for the coveted 16 – 24 demographic. Big mistake. Lose your roots and you lose your way.

The extended version of this movie was also watched, but it’s not very extended, only a few minutes total. A couple short scenes added, but most of the extra footage is just a few seconds here and there during combat. Statham gets the lion’s share of that, showing off his keen grenade-throwing skills and some extra stabbings.

But this one is the best of the three, no matter how diluted every actor’s role is. No matter how uninspired the score is, the action is full of good stunts and decent banter, pretty explosions and Schwarzenegger gets to rip off with that huge shotgun he stole from Terry Crews. Still miss Randy Quaid as the guru, but Gibson is the best villain yet. Panoramic in scope, in several different ways. But… nobody has Steven Seagal’s phone number?

More info here…

The Expendables 2 (2012)

Back for another rollicking installment, the E-Boys did well enough with the first one to get funding to make another. Like the original, this movie starts out with a subplot to get the juices flowing, and by juices i mean bullets, knives, and in Jet Li’s case a couple deadly iron skillets. The first movie’s opener had the guys saving a ship infested with Somali pirates, and this time they’re busting up a private army’s compound in Asia. The highlight, of course, is crashing their spare motorcycle. You’ll love where they park it.

Still no Steven Seagal, but this one has Jean Claude Van Damme as our boss badguy, Chuck Norris dips in for a while, and we get larger cameos from Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Unfortunately, Jet Li bows out after the prelude, and Liam Hemsworth is the new kid in the clique, but leaves the E-Boys before the main battle too. The newbie who sticks around is Yu Nan as Maggie, not a bad fighter in her own right. Also missing is Randy Quaid, who was the group’s guru in the first movie.

You know the formula: our squad of mercs taking care of business until some bad guy makes it personal, and then it’s a mini war between the Expendables and a medium-sized army. Gluing it all together are emotive montages of tired (or tense) soldiers in the back of a cargo plane, and one-liners peppering the fighting sequences. There’s a feint at a love story, a small amount more backstory on the squadmembers, and some emotional hostage reunions.

But that’s not why we came here. No, we’re here to see a greedy brigade of well-armed Satanists get all blowed up. True to form, this episode has a wooden bridge which turns out to be actually made of kerosene. Statham still prefers knives, big ones, but without Jet Li this one is lighter on the quality chopsocky. Plenty of gun battles, though, including one at an airport in a poor corner of Europe, notable for the Satanists only arriving in two 25-foot trucks, and yet losing about 200 fully-armed men. Must have been clown trucks.

The classic rock soundtrack is back, and better than in the first movie, though a Little Richard tune gets tragically drowned by constant gunfire. But i understand. If this was Tarantino, the foley effects would have been muted (or absent) and the song would have been upfront. But that’s Tarantino, and that’s not what this movie is trying to be. The Expendables movies are throwbacks. Shiny new throwbacks, yes, but not only in plot but in style these movies are trying to recreate the whole feel of a legitimate 1982 summer blockbuster.

It’s the whole idea, get the band back together. The Expendables franchise wants to make the movies these guys loved to watch, not just the ones they acted in. Everyone wants that. What ever kind of movies you like, there’s always a few which stick with you, movies where you watch them and say “I wish there were more movies like that.” These guys are just like you, only they had the fame and connections to actually make more movies like they like. In this case, movies where the bad guys are well defined (here they all have the same tattoo), and where badass buddies team up to take ’em out.

On the whole, this one delivers, but on a smaller plate than the original movie. Not a crime, most sequels do this exact thing. Where this one succeeds on its own is Van Damme’s great final battle mano-a-mano, and a string of silly things the cameo players do with each other’s catchphrases. It is a chopsocky shoot-em-up, and not taking itself too seriously is important for this mega ensemble cast to appear together without stretching the bands of believability beyond repair.

If you like this kind of movie, you’ll like this one. If you don’t, then there are about 70,000 other movies out there so you can certainly find what you’re looking for somewhere else.

More info here

The Expendables (2010)

Comfort food for anyone who likes Steven Seagal. He’s not in this one, but everyone else who did action movies in the 1980’s is here. Hell, we’ve even got Bruce Willis and the Arnoldator in bit roles. Ever hear of that parlor game Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon? This movie alone is a whole degree. Basic plot is mercenaries go kill bad guys and rescue good guys, then Dolph Lundgren gets pouty, then they bust up a Latin American banana republic.

Since this is 2010, Dolph gets redemption because everybody wins in 2010. Except for some general (pronounced “heneral” here) and his private army. They don’t win at all. There’s some plot twists and Eric Roberts is the bad guy, what a shock, but all you need to know is that this is a shoot-em-up with chopsocky, and Statham loves knives so there’s some stabsocky too. Naturally, there are explosions. A nice dock on a lake appears to be made out of wood, but apparently it is made out of kerosene and the local fishermen use it to store more kerosene, tons of it, in crates whick look wholly unsuitable for storing kerosene. Yay!

Stallone directs and also co-wrote it, and he lets the old school crewe riff in some scenes, but ad-libbing is not the sharpest repartee when the cast’s average age is 56. I’m sure they were all historic ballbusters when they got together at Sly’s house for drinks when he pitched the project, but turn a camera on them and they freeze up, getting all worried about the status of their career comebacks.

In that roundabout way, I’m saying that you’re not viewing literature here, you’re watching a vehicle for several actors you wondered about, what they were up to lately. Some of the one-liners are pretty good, others pretty corny, but even the corny ones are part of the formula. A little updated, but the formula has always worked. And it does again here, if you like the formula for action movies, you’ll enjoy this one. Keep an eye out for a pickup basketball game, then find your rewind button.

The extended version is just as good, sometimes those longer cuts are not such a good idea, but here Sly adds 10 minutes, mostly additional dialogue and a few scenes are re-edited to change shots around. The additional backstory to the characters and added jokes were definitely a good idea in this movie. Other additions were just 1-second shots in the midst of fast paced hand-to-hand combat, adding depth to the action. These extra touches make the crescendo of the main battle scene 50% more satisfying, so it really feels like we’ve accomplished something here. My arms flew up in the “touchdown” signal when Terry Crews finally shows up with the most asskickingest shotgun fusillade of all time.

The score is just what you would want, and either they spent some cash on song rights, or the existence of iTunes has pushed down the price of 70’s monster rock hits. We even get “Keep On Chooglin” by CCR, and the last time I heard that was off a vinyl LP. Great job on the music… except for the extended version. The score is gutted in the longer cut, tunes by Mountain, Thin Lizzy and Georgia Satellites got the axe and the main battle is set to a tune by Shinedown, an improvement over the orchestral score in the short version, but the same tune plays at the end credits, replacing the much more satisfying and apropos track “The Boys Are Back In Town”. If i was scoring this movie, i would have certainly added Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire” in the scene where Stallone and Statham arrive in Vilena, the tune is nicely south-of-the-border-ish and the lyrics would have carried the theme of the immediately-previous dialogue perfectly. Alas, a missed opportunity.

One more thing to note, the violence in this kind of movie is often toned down, editing cuts coming just at the right moment to avoid most of the blood and camera angles chosen to leave the most nasty bits of action to the viewer’s imagination. Not the case here. This one is a buckets o’ blood gorefest. We have on-camera dismemberment, spouts of blood from gunfire and stabwounds, and although the early-on estimate is that the isle of Vilena has an army of about 200 guys, there are easily over 300 bad guys killed.

Eric Roberts, as the main baddy obviously dies, no spoiler there, but his offing is a bit too theatrical and disappointingly clean. Maybe that was in his contract. On the other hand, his main minion, played by the mountainous Steve Austin, is really tough to kill, and his offing is suitably nasty and fully on-camera… again, except for the extended version. In the long cut of the movie, Steve’s death is considerably tamer. Pity.

The full review is here