Expendables 2: Good-Bad, or Bad-Bad?

What the hell did I just watch? Was it a made- for- TV special? That’s certainly what the putrid special effects would suggest. Was it a parody of generic American action movies? Aren’t parodies supposed to be funny? I feel like I just watched a film of a bunch of drunken 60 year old kids playing “good guys vs. bad guys” with toy guns and explosives. It seems that no one involved in the making of this movie actually cared. Not the actors, not the directors, and certainly not the damn producers. If phoned-in crap was a sport, these guys just got the gold medal. I’m fairly certain I’ve seen more compelling storytelling from home-videos of my 6 and 7 year old sisters playing house with their favorite Barbie dolls. Who knew that if we had only given them some plastic explosives to add into the mix, we could have sold the footage to Hollywood?

Sylvester Stallone, who looks like the mustachioed porn star he was destined to become if Rocky had never happened, reprises his role as “captain whatever” of some team that kills stuff for America. Then again, maybe Bruce Willis is captain whatever—it’s really kind of unclear, but it doesn’t really matter and you don’t really need to care, so let’s just move on. Following the over-botoxed former action star into battle is a giant Scandinavian emo God that I think is Dolph Lungren (see terrifying picture above). Also joining him are the paper-thin characters that have randomly been assigned to actors Jason Statham, Chuck Norris and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But enough about the cast, right? Let’s get to the action: Jet Lee beats some guys up with some kitchen appliances for a few minutes, and soon after jumps out of a plane for some reason I’m not sure about, hopefully in an attempt at Hara-kiri to spare his family the dishonor of him being in such a complete and utter failure of a movie (considering some of the other failures he’s been in that’s really saying something). Jet Lee is never heard from again for the rest of the movie, which makes these kitchen appliance skydiving shenanigans all the more baffling.

Anyway, after this random false-start, the movie starts again with a bunch of cars driving in to what the filmmakers must’ve thought to be a super-authentic replica of a standard middle-eastern village (i.e., rehashed racist movie stereotype #73). Stallone and Co. suddenly ride in and start shooting everyone and they don’t stop until all those “funny-talkin’ non-‘mericans” is dead. Along the way, Arnold Schwarzenegger (who for some reason looks like he was recently electrocuted) and Chuck Norris show up and help shoot people whenever Stallone’s team runs out of bullets.

The term “acting” doesn’t really apply here. Essentially, everyone comes on the screen and acts like themselves. Bruce Willis, who actually has talent, does a commendable job. And surprisingly enough, Jean Claude Van Damme has a few moments. Of course, these moments are then immediately followed by equally terrible moments, but I'll give him props as anything Van Damme does is worth noting—this includes kicking people, doing splits, wearing silk underwear, and getting erections on live TV (YouTube it if you must, but only if you must). Going along with the earlier vein of not giving a crap, Chuck Norris also doesn’t appear to care. And Arnold definitely doesn’t: he actually somehow seems to have gotten worse at speaking English.

But alright, I know, it is my job to specifically point out the good, the bad, and the ugly as regards the writing aspects of this film. And actually there were some interesting points you can study and learn from in this film. And good writing shines through—even if the acting and directing are 100% awful, you can really tell when there’s artistry in the writing. So let’s get to it shall we?

LOL, just kidding. The writing is crap. The dialogue is contrived, stale, and devoid of originality, substance, or really even any real purpose. The plot makes less sense than ovo-lacto vegetarians.

You know, I can’t even go on with this review. I’m infuriated that people were actually paid to act, write, and make this. Why should I care about critiquing this movie when the people who created it clearly didn’t care about putting any effort into it? My only desire after seeing this movie was to make fun of all the people involved, but even that is getting boring at this point. You most likely weren’t going to see this movie anyway, but be warned. This is not the fun kind of awful, this is the angry kind of awful. Save your money. Letters of appreciation can be sent to [email protected].