The Expendables

There’s no excuse for The Expendables but then again, why should there have to be? This is a film that bathes in the excesses of its forefathers; a throwback to the 80s heyday of macho action heroes destroying everything in their sight in order to protect the girl/save the innocents/bring down the bad guy. You know the drill: no building left standing, no vehicle left uncharred, no faceless solider left breathing, no piece of grass left unsinged. I can’t, in any sort of good conscience, recommend it; it’s too shallow, too broad, too cheap looking, not witty enough and, as a throwback, lacks the kind of personality that made its referents so special, but anyone who sees it will, I suspect, be getting their money’s worth. Sylvester Stallone (who also directs and co-writes) stars as Barney Ross, the main badass in a team of ragtag elite fighters. They’re like the A-Team except, since they are all played by discernible action movie heroes of different varieties (Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren) Stallone doesn’t rely on providing generic types so much as simply coasts on the presence of his stacked line-up. That’s fair. It’s like trading in one superficiality for another, but Stallone uses his team as a reason to coast through. Presence, after all, only goes so far if you don’t get to caring about the hero your tagging along with. Thus the film coasts lightly on the surface, afraid to ever delve deeper into any emotional interest lest it get in the way of blowing stuff up. It’s never really explained how The Expendables know each other, who pays their bills, and just whether or not what they are doing is technically legal. In fact, the only time we ever do get a glance at anything genuinely human is when Mickey Rourke, as the old dog who mans the HQ, conveys a painful story from his past and runs away with the movie. The mission, given to Stallone by a no-nonsense Bruce Willis, after being passed on by Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of the films "guilty pleasure" scenes, is to travel to a remote Latin American country and rid it of, oh I don’t know, anyone who doesn’t look like a friend to the U.S.? Ruling over the country is an evil dictator who is secretly at the mercy of an evil American ex-agent played by Eric Roberts, who, as far as villains go, is basically a stock character who stands around with a menacing scowl because these things need villains. It’s never quite explained what Roberts' purpose is, why he holds command over the dictator or what he wants to achieve but hey, his number one heavy is played by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. You see how it works? So the team visit the country, case it, meet a young beauty who is both a revolutionary and the general’s daughter, and narrowly escape after they are detected. But just to show those slimy South Americans, they blow the hell out of their harbour via airplane machine guns. What they actually discover when there is a mystery to me, but whatever it is, it prompts them to return with some serious firepower and lay waste to everything in their sights, all in order to, I guess, save the girl while, along the way, just for flavour, one of them crosses over onto the other team’s side. What more description of The Expendables does one need? A lot of things go boom while little plot gets in the way. The film is funny but not nearly funny enough and, as was the case with Stallone’s Rambo, the violence, at times, is far too serious to be taken as entertainment. At other times, when CGI is employed the film looks cheap: the bloodshed reminiscent of circa 1998 arcade violence. And yet there is a certain sense of freewheeling fun on display here. One must nod in admiration at a film that is willing to pull out all the stops and not apologize for it for better or worse and the film, for the most part, features action that feels more or less authentic. As a throwback the film undershoots its target but as an excessive display of recognizable faces laying waste to everything in their path well, what more did you really want?

Iron Man 2

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune likes to say that he believes the last thing to ever go wrong with a movie is the actors. They’re certainly the first thing to go right with Iron Man 2. One doesn’t really expect good performances from action movies anymore but they are the only thing that keeps this bloated sequel afloat, which is top heavy in a brazenly episodic way while it tries to introduce almost a half dozen new characters and act as it’s own product placement for future Marvel films to come. The film is so busy in fact that it’s almost a breath of fresh air then when it gets on with itself in the third and gets unapologetically noisy. Director John Favreau has become a more skilled action sequence director this time out and is still a good filmmaker, but not a good enough one to refrain from buckling under the pressure to go bigger, faster, stronger for this one. Iron Man hasn’t reached the bigness, loudness, sloppiness or dumbness of the Transformers movies, but you can see it getting there. That’s a shame to report because, when writing about the original film two years ago I saw all the elements of a great sequel to match even Spider-Man 2 falling into place. There was, at the center, the troubled man who needed to battle the inner conflict of being a responsible human being with being a superhero; you know, the very stuff that made Marvel comics the near monopoly name in comic book popularity? The Tony Stark of Iron Man 2 isn’t so much troubled any more other than the issue he has with keeping his inflating ego in check. Here he’s basically privatized world peace, cleared the land of war and has no discernible competition in the department of crafting suits of armour to help fend off the foes of the world. Of course, with such an advanced and important piece of technology, the government wants it, and why wouldn’t they? Can they really leave the fate of world peace in the hands of one man? Tony Stark, if you think about it, could demolish democracy as we know it, and what if he were to use the technology to indulge his personal fancy or turn it against the world? He after all, not only trumps the evil of the world, but he trumps governments as well. Of course Stark isn’t giving up the suit any time soon. He is the suit and the suit is him he argues. Without one there isn’t the other. What I’ve just outlined is the set up to a great film that never quite manages to come. Stark promises the government that all other companies are at least a decade away from mimicking his technology, so until that happens there should be no cause for concern. This sparks the anger of the Russian Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) who believes that Tony’s father stole the design of his reactor core from his father and builds one for himself to enact revenge. This sparks the interest of fellow weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) who has been trying to copy Stark’s designs but failing miserably. Throw on top of that Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) being put in charge as CEO of Stark Industries and a whole sagging midsection in which Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson walk on for no better reason than to increase interest in an upcoming Avengers film. What’s most surprising about Iron Man 2 is how little of it actually involves Iron Man. The film is so busy establishing new characters and worrying about Stark’s pandering to the public that it fails to give the hero anything meaningful to do until the final act, at which point, when the story finds itself and comes down to the dynamics of hero versus villain, is quite entertaining and enjoyable, in a loud, excessive kind of way. And yet, there’s Robert Downey Jr., Mickey Rourke, Don Cheadle and Sam Rockwell all at the top of their game, always reeling the film back in while it veers wildly in every direction. They are funny and alive as characters even though the movie, at times, seems like it hasn’t the faintest idea what it should do with them. They don’t quite save the film, but they make it a heck of a lot better than it should have been.

The Celebrity Connection: Mickey Rourke

Mickey Rourke is such a strange man that it's always surprising to rediscover just what a great actor he is. And once upon a time, he looked like something that could possible resemble a sex symbol. Today he looks like he's about two or three steps from ending up in the ICU (I always wake up expecting to see headlines that say Mickey Rourke: 1952-2010), but in the 80s he was a hot commodity. I was watching St. Elmo's Fire tonight which was also a staple of the 80s (like The Breakfast Club after graduation) and noticed something peculiar. Check it out:
Could Judd Nelson just be Mickey Rourke in disguise? You decide.