action – What I Learned Tomorrow

Red Dawn (2012)

Didn’t suck as bad as the critics said. The premise was a lot more plausible in 1985 when we could use the Russians as the bad buys, them being a superpower and all. When this remake came out 28 years later, they had to use North Korea. Really, there’s no two ways about it: this decision cripples the effectiveness of the movie.

The original was a good movie, and deserved to be remade. This one has all the elements which made the original good. But swapping out Russia for North Korea, because the movie studio didn’t want to offend Putin, makes this movie fall flat on its face. The rest of the movie is decent, the script and plot, the actors and acting. Directing and editing were competent. Just the setting is too ridiculous to overcome.

With that fatal flaw, this movie is forgettable. The only reason the remake happened was that the original is still loved by all males (and many females) who were between 7 and 27 in 1985. Still a great movie, one of the 1980s best action flicks. It worked because the premise could work. Russians in 1985. North Korea does not work, in any year. This remake dropped the ball so badly, that it will not be remembered by anyone.

The original worked because it was set in Michigan, thus the plausible emotional use of the term “wolverines”. This one is set in Spokane, Washington, even though it was filmed in Michigan. Ridiculous. It’s a mess of ham-handed decisions by upper executives.

It seems like the first idea was to make a good remake of a good movie. But someone overruled using Russia as the invaders of the USA, because they didn’t want to hurt Putin’s dainty emotions. Another executive, the kind of producer who has a lot of money but not much sense, probably then suggested that the project go forward using China as the invader of the USA. Keeps the plausibility, but obviously that can’t happen. China’s government would never allow the film to screen there, and would use economic and diplomatic muscles to “convince” a bunch of other countries to ban the movie too. There goes 1/4 of overseas ticket sales.

So the next bright idea (this is sarcasm) was to swap in a politically acceptable bad guy, North Korea. At this point, somebody realized that setting the flick in Michigan was idiotic, because North Korea doesn’t have the manpower to invade as far as the Great Lakes. So that was swapped for Washington State. Now we see the snowballing of absurd rationalizations that the production staff had to contort around.

Wolverines in Spokane. Vague allusions to Russians on “the Eastern Seaboard”. A cludgy mention that North Korea has “the world’s fourth-largest army”. Hmmm, where have we heard that before? I know, weren’t we once told that Iraq had “the world’s fourth-largest army”? There was a way out. They could have just set the movie in 1985 and used the Russians as the bogeymen. Either that idea was also shot down by the Kremlin, or nobody among the producers was bright enough to think of it.

Again, we see it’s true: lose your roots and lose your way. A shame, because if it was redone properly, it could have matched the original’s cultural staying power. But as it ended up, mangled by political correctness, nobody remembers this movie, only 3 years later.

Rating and 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