The Expendables: Totally Forgettable

I suppose it shouldn't have been very surprising that The Expendables wasn't very good. What really threw me, however, was how little fun it was. This feeling was, I'm sure, heightened by seeing Scott Pilgrim in the same week (which was maybe the most fun movie I've ever seen) but I truly expected it to be at least stupid mindless fun. Instead it was stupid, mindless and long stretches of dull in between the fun that there was to be had. I didn't HATE this movie, but I didn't really like it either. It inhabited that terrible place where something fails to evoke a reaction- it had it's moments, but ultimately failed. I wanted another Transporter film. What I got was about 1/5 of one.

The Role of Women
I think there are three women in The Expendables. One is Mickey Rourke's girlfriend whose name he can't remember. This is played for laughs but is more sad than funny. She's incredibly trashy and loaded up with plastic surgery but is shot in such a way that it is clear we are supposed to find her attractive. Later in the movie we find out she has broken up with him and he is very upset over this nameless girl. So upset that he is going to finish painting that guitar he promised her and then "smash it to shit." Also, he is questioning his fundamental worth as a person. Girls sure do suck in The Expendables.

Case in point is Charisma Carpenter who plays Jason Statham's girl. At least she was his girl until he came back after disappearing mysteriously without any contact for a month only to find her with another man!! FOR SHAME!! Oh wait, that actually sounds pretty reasonable to me. Later on he stops by to find out that his replacement is a total douchebag who hit her and he proceeds to beat the shit out of him and all his douchebag friends, threatening to kill him if he hurts her again. Then he tells her she should have waited because he was worth it and takes her home. Oh man, looks like he is redeemed and she got what she deserved- at least that's what the movie seems to be telling us. Because if guys aren't emotionally distant they are probably wifebeaters. Make your choice ladies! Well, it's good to see Charisma Carpenter working on something more high-profile than the Butterfinger Defense League. Watching her character become fully realized on Buffy and Angel was one of the best parts of that show.

Finally, the character presented as the strong female lead!! What does she do? Well, she talks tough for about 2 minutes. Then she is beaten senseless by Stone Cold Steve Austin, water-boarded in a scene that made me incredibly uncomfortable, and then almost raped by two guys before Sylvester Stallone bursts in and cuts these guys hands and heads off with a huge machete because he is the hero, dammit. Can you believe those misogynist rapists? Oh wait Stallone wrote the scene and directed it. Whatever! Her character also leads to a pretty (unintentionally) funny scene where Stallone grapples with the concept of compassion and cannot seem to wrap his head around why he would be feeling it ever for the first time.

The ultimate lesson about women here is not that they are evil or bad, but ultimately they are irrelevant. These guys have beers, friends, motorcycles, weights and weapons. Girls are just extraneous. The end lesson isn't that girls are to be objectified, but more to be ignored.

Action Sequences
This was the most disappointing part of the film because it was what was intended to define it.

First off, the action was too scarce, there wasn't nearly enough of it in the first half. I wanted this movie to be basically 100% tough dudes wrecking shit. I would say we got maybe 40%-60% and a good amount of that felt disjointed and incohesive. Apparently everyone was given a switch they press to cause a random explosion somewhere and often people seemed to appear and disappear in ways that made absolutely no sense. Let me break it down by star:

Sylvester Stallone- Fires a gun fast and gets beat up by Steve Austin. Some of his over the top wrestling moves were cool-looking. Mostly he just looks intense while running. He is in very good shape for a man his age.

Jet Li- apparently this is a movie where they did not want Jet Li to do much martial arts. I've been raised by Hollywood to believe that he can defeat anyone, literally anyone, with his incredible Kung-Fu prowess. Seeing him nearly defeated by Dolf Lundgren who doesn't do much aside from be huge had me calling bullshit in a way that disturbed the theater patrons around me.

Terry Crews- Barely does shit in this movie. Which sucks, because he is awesome. I guess firing a big-ass gun is cool? (No, it isn't. He could probably break a dude in half!)

Randy Couture- Jokes are made about his character being a pussy because he goes to therapy. I would think that shit would be pretty damn necessary, but whatever. He doesn't do much acting but his fight with Stone Cold where he lights him on fire using ridiculous wrestling movies and then punches him into a lake made of fire was pretty awesome. There's probably some meta-thing I would understand if I knew anything about wrestling- but I don't so I didn't.

Jason Statham- was the one awesome part of this movie. All the martial arts Jet Li didn't do was given to Mr. Statham. He was the "guy who's really into knives" and holy shit did he cut a lot of people in some very bad-ass and inventive ways. Most of the movie I felt like I had seen it before or that it was generic as hell- except for when Jason Statham was on screen. He did some ridiculously awesome shit, and that is what I came to see this movie for. He is one of my top 25 hetero man-crushes.

Dolph Lundgren- At the very beginning of the movie he blows a guys torso off with a sawed off shotgun and laughs in a hilariously over the top manner. I was getting pretty excited because I thought the movie was going for an absurdly-ridiculous-over-the-top-gore-comedy a la Dead Alive or Army of Darkness channeled through 80's action movie tropes. No such luck. Lundgren is still really awesome though- Google him! He's been doing some hilarious shit recently.

The main issue with the action is that very little of it was anything I hadn't seen before. Some of it they did very well or better than I'd seen elsewhere, but ultimately I could not point to a single thing I hadn't seen before (outside of Statham's bad-assery with knives). Most of the explosions and punching left me totally unengaged- which is the ultimate failure because that kind of stuff is the easiest to grab someone with if done even half-well.

Charisma/Charm
One of the things that make people really go for action movie franchises isn't just the action sequences, it's the pithy one-liners or on-going jokes between characters during moments of tension. Or things that are just so bad-ass or intense that they are either absurdly awesome or iconic (think: "You feelin lucky?")

This movie sets out to have many such moments and lines. Every single one of them falls flat. Part of the problem is that most of the characters don't even have 1-dimensions since we end up knowing actually nothing about them. Each character is given maybe one trait that is mentioned briefly and then never brought up again. The interim is not filled with action but mostly meandering around. The end result is a cast that is less than the sum of it's parts. Because I don't care about these characters, there is no tension and thus it cannot be dispelled by one-liners that aren't funny anyway.

The reason anyone went to see this movie was on the strength of it's cast, but because of all the softness in the script and the overabundance of characters no one is really given an opportunity to shine. They all get their screen time, in 30 second chunks, and are all bogged down by the weight of each other's presence, rather than being elevated by it. They're like a dozen HGH-fueled Titanic survivors all trying to cling to the same life-vest. Any feelings I felt for them were mostly disgust because they were bullshit male posturing to such an absurd degree that they actually did the opposite of almost everything they said. They are the gayest straight guys ever.

Given how much the movie dragged, it was amazing that at the end of it I really didn't know much about any of the characters. This movie could have benefited from being more like "The Rundown" which was genuinely funny at times and often ridiculous. Most importantly it was charming. This movie was just dull.

Audience

I feel like this movie was made for fans of professional wrestling. In fact the audience around me, dressed in "Tapout" and "Austin 3:16" Merchandise confirms it. I feel like I would have appreciated a lot more of the showdowns or "finishing moves" if I had the background knowledge of these actor's WWE history or whatever. This movie was not nearly compelling enough to learn it.

I did enjoy the Arnold Schwarzenegger scene where Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone basically call him an asshole for 5 minutes and chide him for "wanting to be president."

Takeaways/Lessons
-Women are completely and totally unnecessary, and can inhibit your ability to lead a fulfilled life.
-Being forced to kill your best friend is something you can be called a pussy for.
-Jason Statham is super-awesome.
-Casting a bunch of pretty cool dudes isn't enough if you don't hire good writers or, more importantly, good fight choreographers.
-The fact that more people saw this than Scott Pilgrim is fucking bullshit.
-If I was given this as a gift I would exchange it as a credit towards Scott Pilgrim, it's way better you guys. WAY better.
-Sometimes even when all the pieces are in place for something to be great, it can still let you down; teaching you a valuable lesson about life and maybe, just maybe, about yourself as well. Or just about how people will go see any fucking thing, myself included.