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

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