I went to see The Expendables with Evan on Tuesday evening. It was the movie I had in mind since we decided to see a mindless movie every week this summer. It’s the movie I’ve been giddy for ever since I heard it was coming out. As one of the tag-lines says “Most movies have one hero … this one has them all.” So we get Stallone, Statham, Li, Couture, Crews,
It’s exactly my type of movie. It helped me to clarify what my type of movie is, actually. It’s a bad movie. The dialogue is awful, it takes a while to get going, there’s no character development, some editing could use some work … but the action is over-the-top awesome.
Some things should be clear. Sylvester Stallone should never run again in a movie. It’s just … unnatural. He should never write dialogue again, either. It’s like he was going for banter, and just missed the mark. Some of it was alright, but most of it was bad. The acting isn’t great. Mickey Rourke hits the one and only real acting moment of the movie, so it’s a good thing they gave it to him (“Oh Mickey, you’re so fine …”)
The action, though … man, it takes a while to get going, but once it does, it just speeds up, and speeds up, and speeds up, until I was just delighted. It might be a sad condemnation of my soul, but the violence, guns, martial arts, and explosions just tickled me pink. The last half hour of the movie, I was laughing at the preposterousness of the action. Just when you think it can’t possibly go any higher, they crank it up to 11, and then top that. It’s non-stop mayhem, and it’s ridiculously fun.
It’s a theatre movie for me. No manner of bad acting, dialogue, cliché storm, or anything else could possibly make me want to see this on anything less than the largest screen possible. It’s ridiculous. It’s ludicrous. It borders on silly at times. It’s a helluva lot of fun!
As a bonus, there’s a scene with Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone. It’s got a great line near the end, but other than that, it’s not very funny or necessary. Except for the meta-humour. That’s fantastic.
I’m sorry this review’s so short, but there’s not a lot to say about it. It’s exactly why I go to see movies.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw Stallone running and thought, "That's a bad idea."
ReplyDeleteThe line at the end of the Stallone/Willis/Scwartzisbiggerthanmine scene cracked up the entire theatre I was in. Good stuff.
On another note, this seems to have been the summer of ensemble mindless action flicks, with The Losers, The A-Team, Predators and The Expendables all coming out within months... it's been a good year to be a guy.