Man Movie Talk I - The Expendables

I have a few movies I have seen lately, that I wanted to discuss and thought we needed a new thread for it. As some of you know, I pretty much watch a different movie every night. I would say I watch between 7 and 12 movies a week (the past 7 days have amassed: The Haunting, Road Kill, Date Night, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Fragile, IP Man, The Red Baron, Clash of the Titans, Open House) Granted, many are crap, as me and my wife watch all the cheesy B grade horror films that come out. Every now and then you’ll find a gem (like this weeks was Fragile) but most of the time they are easily forgettable.

BTW- there is a "spoiler" tag that you can add to your posts under OTHERS in the font menu bar when you post replies, or just frame your spoilers with the /spoiler tag.

What I wanted to discuss was the pure testosterone and adrenaline fueled “man” movies. That was lead off by last weeks viewing of “The Expendables”. Full throttle 80’s power action, with all the cheesy one-liners, gratuitous violence, extreme explosions, and macho muscle-heads anyone could ever imagine. If you want some sort of story and character development- this is not the movie for you. If you want to see sh!t blow up, body parts go flying, 100’s of faceless bad guys being decimated, and bullet proof heroes, then you have a movie for the ages.

I’ll try and stay fairly spoiler free for now-

There is some “character” development and acting with the Rourke’s character, and to some extent Statham’s, but for the most part it is just a chain of events to link together action scenes and give the story a resemblance of plot.

Stallone did a great job with this movie, and one of his biggest success has to be having Statham as the co-star. It really is Stallone and Statham as a team as much as it is the entire “Expendables” squad. Statham is always solid, and he is great in this one as well. Jet and Dolph do really good as supporting characters, as does Eric Roberts. The others don’t do much (and Randy Coture’s acting is horrendous), but Terry Crews does steal the spotlight late in the movie, but he is non-existent in the first half. (Let me just say- I now have changed all my MW2 builds!). The cameo appearances of Willis and the Govenator are cool too, and one of the funniest parts of the movie.

Stallone did a good job of mixing the humor in with the action, and not just in the jokes and character banter, but the self depreciating 80’s style of one-liners and cheesy characters and situations. It just works for me in this movie.

Another thing I thought Stallone did really well (I keep saying Stallone, as he was the writer and director of the movie, so it pretty much was all him in getting this done) was the way he did the action scenes. No real high tech 007 gadgetry, no super insane “unsurvivable” stunts, just straight up blood and bullets, big guns, big muscles, and bigger explosions, straight stunts and FX with little wire work and CGI graphics. Just straight up in your face action.

As an overall movie it’s good but not great, but as the man movie it was supposed to be, it is excellent and will be hard to top. For what it was meant to be 4 out of 4 stars!

Now for the spoiler talk (so stop reading if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to know what happens- like the plot is important at all)…

***SPOILERS***Click and highlight for spoilers

Spoiler:

***END SPOILERS***

What are your thoughts on the movie? Has anyone else even got a chance to see it yet?


~mrmiller

that was an epic win movie

yeah this is a really good movie fun as hell

Just watched this again- AA12 still owns! Also, Stallone has mastered the slight of hand perk. Great show.

~mrmiller

I thought it was a good movie... great action and it was cool to see all those man movie stars in one flick... I really enjoyed the movie.

Rumour has it, the next movie will revolve around Willis's mysterious character, with a return to movies for Charlie Sheen as a CIA agent investigating him.

Haven't seen it yet-- it's in the Netflix queue though...LOL
I'm sure it's one of those that I'll love. I wanted to see Fragile the other night, but thought it would be crap. After your review (or partial review) I'll give it a shot.