The Expendables 2

The movie this week was The Expendables 2, sequel to arguably the most mindless movie of 2010. And one of my favourite movies of 2010. Those facts are closely related. Evan laid the smack down in preview game. We tied on Argo, but he got all the other ones, including Dredd and one more that I can't remember. I'm also pretty sure there was one that neither of us got, but it was two whole days ago, and I can't remember back that far (a few too many soccer balls to the head last night, evidently).

The movie opens with a pretty long cold open, so that was pretty awesome. I like action at the beginning, because it gets you hooked right away. Say what you want about Die Hard, but it starts off very slow. This one, not so much. Far more action right at the beginning than the previous instalment. And the action is even more over the top. Within 30 seconds, I was giggling at the ludicrousness of it. Not that that's a bad thing, frankly. I love it when action movies just get laughably ridiculous.

Then the movie slows down for a while as the team gets sent on a mission, which goes wrong and one of the members dies! So revenge is one of the goals of the team. Against the villain, played with hamful charm by Jean Claude Van Damme himself. Apparently, missing out on the first one was a regret of his, so when they asked him back for the second, he jumped at the chance.

Other actors show up too, but you've probably heard about them. Ahnold and Bruce Willis play larger roles this time, and Chuck Norris shows up for a bit. He even gets to spout a Chuck Norris fact. Mind you, this movie is pretty self-referential (and self-deprecating) at times. When Arnold mounts an unexpected rescue, he pops out and says "I'm back!" During another fight, he and Bruce are together but run out of ammo. Arnold quips "I'll be back" but Bruce responds with "You've been back enough. this time, I'll be back." And so Arnold says "Yippee Ki-yay" but leaves off the MF bomb.

I liked this movie. That was pretty much a given. In fact, I could tell beforehand that I would like this movie a lot. And I did. There are only a few quibbles. First is the aforementioned slowing down. The first movie did that too, and I wasn't a fan then, either. You're an action franchise. There should be action every ten minutes. Other than that, I didn't like how little Jet Li was in this movie. He was in the opening, and then literally dropped out. I wanted to see him kick more people in places they need to be kicked. Sadly, it wasn't to be.

But besides those few nitpicks, this was an awesome movie. The music was good, the self-awareness was good, the humour was good, the action was awesome, the amount of action stars they stuffed in there was awesome. So it's definitely a theatre movie. You should go see it, unless you hate action or nostalgia.

And with that, we come to a fitting end to the Mindless Movie Marathon. For over two years, Evan and I have been going to see every movie we could, with a few exceptions. However, lives must move forward, or in Evan's case, Westward, and so The Expendables 2 was the last official movie that the Mindless Movie Marathon went to see. I'm sure that we'll watch many, many movies whenever we visit each other, and may even write about them on this very blog. But this will be the last official post. Anything afterwards will be something of a postscript, zombie column (back from the dead, you see).

I'd like to take a moment to thank you, dear readers, for taking so much of your time with what I've written. If you've had half as much fun reading as I've had ... watching the movies that preceded writing these columns, then I've done my job. Also, thanks to the many people that came with us to movies. You've been a tremendous amount of fun. And thank you to their significant others, for letting us drag them to movies, instead of spending time with you. Lastly, thanks Evan. It's been a blast going to so many movies, and while half the fun was going to the movies, the other half was going with you. I wish you good luck and God Speed on your journeys.