Overall impression:

In a nutshell, this movie was made to make Sylvester Stallone feel like a bad-ass action hero one last time before his 65th birthday. The previews boast of a cast full of past and present action movie actors. In reality, several of those were no more than brief cameos. The screenplay was co-written by Stallone, who also co-produced, directed, and starred in the film. Yeah, this flick was basically his way of junk-greasing his own ego. It looks like his last hurrah, and seems like he wanted to take out as many action actors as he could with him. I shall henceforth refer to the film as “The Expendable Movie”.

What Happens:

The exhaustive storyline is that a group of elite-force type mercenaries (The Expendables) are contracted to overthrow a dictator of a banana republic (El General). Said dictator is largely a puppet leader backed by a jilted CIA agent gone drug lord. Stallone and another member of The Expendables scout out the island to determine whether the job pays well enough for the work that it will take to complete. In the process, they meet the beautiful daughter of the General and are found out by the bad guys. They leave a swath of fire-storm fed destruction across the island and determine that the job is not worth the money. Once back at home, Stallone has a pang of conscience and decides that he must save the girl. Meanwhile, an unstable Dolph Lundgren who was just excused from The Expendables is contracted by the General and the former CIA dude to infiltrate and exterminate his former boss, Stallone. A fight on home turf ensues ending in the apparent death of Lundgren’s character. With his last breath, he repents to Stallone and tells him everything. Meanwhile, Jason Statham’s character discovers that his girlfriend has taken to another man in his most recent, month long, mysterious absence. Stallone announces that he is going back to the island and nobody else needs to feel obligated to do so. Predictably, the entire team assembles to aid his invasion. On their second trip to the island, they load everything up with C4 (which magically appears in armloads when they are ready to administer it), and kill bad guys with an assortment of weapons that share a triangular range between standard U.S.G.I.-, gun range mall ninja, and silly exaggeration of Future Weapons. There’s quite a bit of a fist fight between Stallone and Steve Austin. When our heroes are cornered between the ex-CIA’s men and the General’s soldiers, the General himself makes a statement (directly over them no less) to his men that he’s had a change of heart and plans on kicking out the Americans that have oppressed them (presumably CIA dude and his cronies). Former CIA dude chose this moment to assassinate the General, and all hell breaks loose. The Expendables are caught in a three-way battle between the soldiers and the American gang. This is when Stallone pulls out a rather large detonator switch (which must have been uncomfortably hidden in an orifice somewhere), and the rest of the movie is basically explosions, burning puddles of fuel, and raw body count. In the end, our heroes have lost no men (including Lundgren, who has a miraculous recovery and turns back to the proverbial Light Side of The Force), and Stallone saves the day. The singular surprise in the ‘plot’ is that he didn’t kiss the girl when he was leaving the island, but did promise that he would return. She was presumably left behind to cure the ills of her home with her pure heart and wise leadership. Upon their return, Statham finds that his replacement has hit his ex-girlfriend. So, he goes to the playground and beats him up along with the other bullies. That’s about it. After about the first ten minutes of set up, there are no surprises, but the entire screenplay kind of flows in all the most obvious directions. Well, besides Stallone not making out with a woman a third of his age – I really didn’t see that coming, given the context of his character.

Notable Characters:

Sylvester Stallone has never been an attractive man, in my opinion. But, he has really not aged well. His characteristic saggy eyes, crooked nose, and Novocain lip are even more pronounced in The Expendable Movie. In the film, Sly plays Barney Ross, leader of the mercenaries. He’s a caricature of a big action hero, with old skin stretched over it. He’s a tattooed, motorcycling, jewelry-wearing, gun blasting bad boy who can pull himself out of the water into a lifting-off airplane by its door-frame while wearing body armor. He dual-wields a pair of 1911s and has a SA revolver which he carries in a SOB holster which he’ll whip out to palm-fan a last-resort burst of lead at the bad guy. Carrying his M4 rifle, as with his 1911s, he aimlessly, carelessly, and wildly waves the muzzle around. Rarely does he ever appear to look for a sight picture or even pretend to exercise any kind of trigger control. This is of course consistent with Stallone’s typical, sociopathic, Hollyweird liberal, double standard on guns – even though he’s good enough to carry a gun, nobody else is. Although in his mid-60’s, it takes help from multiple men for Steve Austin overpower the grunting and snorting Stallone. Many of the other characters spend much of the movie talking about how big and bad he is. This was actually some of the better acting that I’ve seen from Stallone, which isn’t saying much.

Bruce Willis, playing Mr. Church meets with Stallone and Arnold Schwartzenegger playing Trench for a short scene towards the beginning of the film. Church presumably represents the CIA and wants to hire a team of mercenaries to flush the island dictator. Trench is the leader of a rival team. Church wanted to meet with the two of them to determine who would be best for the job. There was a little playful banter between Stallone and The Governator, and Willis got in a few pointed threatening statements, but that was about it for these two big names in the film. I imagine that Stallone dragged on the pants leg of each of these men for weeks until they relented and agreed to do the uncredited but much flaunted cameo.

Getting back to shockingly less than absolutely terrible acting, Jason Statham really opened up his acting abilities in this film and made three facial expressions instead of his standard one! In different scenes, he managed to look pissed off (as we’ve come to expect) and hurt, and happy! Statham played Lee Christmas, a knife-flinging brawler who challenged his knife throwing against Stallone’s single-action shooting multiple times during the movie.

Jet Li played Ying Yang (I know, I know – who the hell named these characters anyway). Ying Yang is predictably the martial arts expert in The Expendables who uses caricatured Kung-Fu motions for every action (including the requisite swishing sound effects) throughout the film. He is obsessive about his diminutive stature and uses it as an argument that he should be paid more than the other mercenaries. Although his martial arts are impressive, he often finds himself helpless against the brute force of the larger characters. Although surrounded by men taller than himself, he was the giant if you count acting abilities. I’m saddened that Li even agreed to do this insulting role. He is so much more talented an actor than that.

Dolph Lundgren plays Gunner Jensen, who gets fired from The Expendables for acting recklessly and outside of the group’s code of ethics. Upon dismissal, he ominously tells Stallone that he won’t cause any trouble because he’s “a nice guy”. Gunner Jensen has a particular beef with the diminutive Ying Yang. Gunner is probably the character with the least surprises, including his betrayal and death, and his resurrection and repentance in the end.

Eric Roberts plays James Monroe, a two-dimensional former CIA agent gone cocaine drug lord. He operates the island using a team of American thugs who influence the military force on the island to keep the people in submission.

Steve Austin plays Monroe’s hired muscle, named Paine (I know – again with the silly names). He does a lot of posturing and head beating in the movie until he falls into a puddle of burning jet fuel in his final fight.

David Zayas plays General Garza, who is the only character in the film with an actual internal conflict. After years of oppressing his people, first on his own and then under the thumb of Monroe and the other Americans, he decides that his pure-hearted daughter was right after all. He comes around to an upright moral position just before his demise, for a Darth Vader-esque death.

Giselle itié plays the beautiful, kind daughter of the general. In her one-track mind, she believes in good triumphing over evil even in the worst of odds. She refuses to flee the island, thinking that she can make a difference with her presence.

Mickey Rourke plays Tool, the lovable, wise womanizing tattoo artist that gives council to The Expendables.

And, I’ve saved the best character for last: Terry Crews plays Hale Caesar, who is the support character for the most important character, his AA-12 shotgun, which nobody has heard of despite being a 28-year-old design. In The Expendable Movie, the AA-12 is louder and more devastating than any other weapon, including M4’s, AK47’s, RPG’s, hand grenades, and belt-fed machine guns. It shoots a mythical, 12-gauge round that stabilizes with spring-loaded tail fins, that explodes upon impact. This fully-automatic shotgun fired hundreds of explosive rounds from only two drum magazines and was light enough that Caesar was able to haul it all over the jungle and through the palace, and finally had to drop it to make his escape from the exploding palace.

Final thought:

Don’t pay full-price to see The Expendable Movie. Wait until it’s in the dollar theaters, or out on rental. Make sure you are boozed up first. This flick would be fun to watch with a group that was pretty well buzzed. Other than that, it’s kind of a waste of time and money.

I am vaguely aware that my son often watches this show on Cartoon Network or maybe Nick (I believe) called Avatar. I’m not one of those disconnected parents that sees the T. V. as the babysitter, and have watched this show with him on multiple occasions. It seems like an innocent enough fantasy story with nothing that I find terribly objectionable in it, but I find it so mind-numbingly boring that I couldn’t tell you who the characters are or anything that they’ve ever done. What I’m watching for is to make sure that some stranger isn’t filling my kid’s head with crap that he doesn’t need. I heard somewhere that they were making a live-action, silver-screen, feature-length version of this show, and I know that he’s going to want to see it. Then, I started hearing these rumors about Avatar hitting the theaters this weekend. “Great,” I thought, “Let’s take kiddo to a matinee on Saturday and check out this little flick. So, I looked into it a little.

So, what’s with the blue people? I don’t remember much about the show, but I don’t remember blue people. the chick looks pretty hot, if you can get over the weird eyes. Actually, that’s kind of… Wait a minute! Marines? I don’t remember Marines being in the cartoon, much less the central characters. Where’s the munchkin with the arrow tat on his gourd? I’m not sure this is the same movie that I’m thinking of at all!

My lovely wife then explained to me that I was confused. It’s James Cameron’s political propaganda picture Avatar that’s coming out on 12/18/09, which has absolutely noting to do with the cartoon that I don’t really remember. She explained that the movie that I was thinking of is The Last Airbender coming out this Summer.

Airbender? Really? I thought the show was called “Avatar.” I had pizza last night and have been bending air all morning. Does that count? Still, that looks a whole lot more like I think it should. Apparently, I’m not the only one that thinks this is a little confusing.

This is just too weird. When they come out with the live action version of Ghost in the Shell, will they name it “Innocence” due to a copyright technicality? Will there be some random pile of special effects and heavily-weighted agenda message coming out half a year earlier that steals the title by legal technicalities? What about Cowboy Bebop? Is there nothing sacred in Hollyweird anymore?

Huh. I guess I just answered my own question.

On that note, let’s watch a Cowboy Bebop teaser!

I REALLY hope they don’t F this one up.

To both my readers,

Last night, Jen and I watched Wanted. It was a fun, campy little flick. It was evident that nobody in the production of the film had so much as handled a real firearm before in their life. There were so many cringe-worthy mishandlings and safety violations, it was truly embarrassing. Then, there’s the whole ‘throwing bullets in a curve’ deal. Yeah. That was special. They explained it by telling us that the assassins can speed up their metabolisms to the point that they can move unnaturally fast. They fail to explain how this hyper-speeding of organic systems can overcome chamber allignment, barrel rifling, a projectile moving at 800+ feet per second, or, you know – physics. All that being said, it was actually a well-made flick, and if you can get past all of that ridiculous stuff, it is worth the watch. Please don’t run out and invest in the special edition Blu-Ray Disk or anything. But conversely, if it comes on TV, don’t throw a brick through your screen and run screaming out of your house, tearing at your eyes.

Jenni and I have agreed for years that Angelina Jolie is quite the physical specimen. I know that she’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I find her to be a truly beautiful woman. I find it difficult to complain about seeing her trot around in the buff on the screen. If I met her in real life, I’d probably be making a conscious effort to not act goofy. Granted, I wouldn’t forsake my family and run off to Brazil with her given the chance, but she’s a looker, for sure!

Towards the end of the film (and I’ll try not to give too many spoilers here), we see the heroine fall to the floor. I Googled, and tried to find a screen shot of the image in question, but failed miserably in the quest. When she collapses, there is an angle shown where her butt looks – well, kind of floppy. I don’t know if that’s a problem area for the actress, or it was simply a game of poorly-chosen angles, but it really doesn’t look good right there, for only a few frames.

As the screenshot changed, I blurted out to Jenni, “You have a better butt than Angelina Jolie!!!”

“What?” she looked at me like I had spinach in my teeth.

I responded, “Didn’t you see that?”

“OK,” she said, “You better back it up. I’ve got to see this!”

So, I complied. I wound the disk back a few frames and paused it. “See?” I pointed, and made a sound effect, “Boyioing!”

She cracked up, “Well, look at that!”

That really didn’t get me as many brownie points as I thought it would, but it was still fun.

The biggest tragedy with this movie was what I detailed in that first paragraph. The firearms handling and attitude toward shooting in general were flat-out hokey. Anytime some big-shot producer puts out the money to make a shooty, action-esque film, they ought to make sure there’s a firearms instructor on the payroll. There should be someone on the set, during practice and filming that has a clue how to handle a gun, and what they are and aren’t capable of. I know, I know – that would completely eliminate the explodey-head-geyser-of-blood-from-a-9mm screen candy, and it would mean that the characters would be reloading from time to time, if that strikes you as a negative. But, it would portray shooters handling their weapons like they knew what they were doing – and not like some unknowing, Hollyweird, lowfat, half-caf with Splenda latte-sipper. I’m just sayin’

UPDATE:

I was thinking about how disrespectful this post could come across, so I wanted to give a little addendum. My wife is a beautiful, sexy, intelligent woman, and I love her socks off! I am continually humbled at the fact that God put her together so perfectly, with me in mind. I can’t imagine that any other woman would have the patience or energy to come along with me on all of my insane adventures in life. I can’t imagine any other woman even close to Jenni in the looks department wanting to hang around with me. Beyond all that, if there were some such magical woman out there, I’m sure that she would not keep me mentally stimulated – and that one is a biggie! I think Jenni has a great butt (yup, better than Jolie’s!), however the most beautiful woman in the world who can’t keep up in conversation is like an empty eggshell. After eleven years together, we still stay up talking about this or that way too late in the night, just like a couple of stupid teenagers. I would hate for one instant to give anyone the impression that I’m not nutty-in-love with my wonderful wife. And, I would hate to make her mad because she thought that I was being disrespectful to her on the interwebtron. I meant nothing of the sort. OBTW – I don’t know whether she’s read this post yet, but I kind of doubt it.

I understand that this weekend, Transformers 2 hits the theaters. I probably could not care less. I thought the original was a steaming pile of crap – fairly typical of Michael Bay films, in my humble opinion (with the exception of The Island which was a glorious fluke containing plot and character development). I have read less than glowing reviews of the sequel. It seems that people who like these movies pretty much only want to see the combined eye-candy of CG-rendered giant robots fighting and Megan Fox strutting her stuff. I think that’s pretty funny, as I don’t think that she’s really all that great-looking. Don’t get me wrong, I guess she’s kind of cute. Her eyes are a little close together and her jawline is a little manly for my taste. These are telltale signs of poor genetic stock the the reptilian corner of my brain. She does have some striking features, but not my style. Thanks anyway. I used to think that she was really stupid, and a terrible actress to boot. Yet, in an interview with Total Film, she was asked what she would do to stop Megatron if she met him in real life. Her response,

make a deal with him, and instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?

First of all, Meg – can I call you ‘Meg’? in Middle America, we are not wife-beating, toothless, barefoot, religious zealouts that run around in our lifted 4×4’s looking for queers to beat up. You might be shocked to see how many of us out here aren’t ‘white.’ And, we prefer the term ‘redneck.’ It’s actually quite nice around here. If you had any experience of my part of the country beyond what you read in Grapes of Wrath before you dropped out of high school, you might have slightly less low-brow preconceptions. Yet, I digress.

Meg’s suggestion of sending Megatron here is actually quite sly. and I may have severely underestimated her. Sure, if the Decepticons stick to the big cities, they’ve got a whole bunch of sitting ducks to terrorize. But, if they came to the Midwest, they wouldn’t last half an hour! And yet, that wouldn’t make for a very good movie. We rednecks would give them a good old fashioned, country a**-kicking. If at that point they still didn’t want to play nice with us, we’d escort them off the planet and tell them “there’s more where that came from.” If they wanted to play nice however, they’d probably be welcome to stay for dinner before they went home. So, if you city slickers get in a pickle with any inter-galactic mechanical terrors, just do like Meg says and send them our way. We’ll take care of them.

One of my dearest friends, Sean, asked me if I had seen The Transporter 3. When I admitted that I had seen none of the films in this trilogy, he insisted that I should check them out. So last night, Jen and I rented all three and watched them back-to-back. They were entertaining, but no great feat of film-making. To me, they were basically a blend of Die Hard and The Hire with a little Dirty Harry and James Bond thrown in the mix for good measure. They also ripped off a fight scene from Romeo Must Die, in which Jet Li makes extensive use of a fire hose to clobber the bad guys. The biggest problem is that Jason Statham is not nearly as good an actor as Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, Clive Owen, any one of the multitude of Bonds, or Jet Li for that matter. Statham’s deal is that he’s a muscular, rugged-looking dude that’s pretty good with his martial arts – namely kickboxing. He’s basically today’s version of Jean Claude Van Damme. Character development in the film was nominal at best, adequate at worst. The plot lines in each of the three were decent enough to keep me watching. The driving scenes were pretty involved, although they peaked in unrealistic silliness in the second episode. Since Statham can’t mask his English accent, they should have pitched his character as being retired from the RAF instead of Army Special Forces. I would say that overall, the films get better in succession, if not increasingly far-fetched at the core of each story. As I said, they were entertaining enough. My biggest beef with Statham is his ability (or lack thereof) to make faces. Therefore, I submit for your approval The Many Emotions of Jason Statham:

Well, it seems that Jessica Alba started putting up posters around Oklahoma City like a pre-teen in her own bedroom. Why do these actor-types feel like they can do whatever they want whenever they want to? It defies all reason! There was Wynona with her shoplifting, Bobcat with his live TV arson, and now this! Then again, I’m talking about a chunk of society that has an alarmingly high concentration of belivers in a religion made up by a crazy sci-fi author. I am speaking of a group of people employed on the basis of pretending to be someone that they are not. These people may spend months immersed in fantasy because it’s their job! That’s all fine and dandy, but why do they feel like they don’t have the same boundaries as the rest of us?

For that matter, why do they think they have any right whatsoever to tell the rest of us how to think? They aren’t paid to think. They are paid to pretend they are so many somethings that they are not. Like many others, I don’t care what they think just as long as they make me laugh, or cry, or happy, and basically entertained in general. Don’t tell me what to think. We will tell you what to think. As my lovely wife has said of these people on more than one occasion, “You are here for my entertainment! Dance, monkey!”

Jess, can I call you ‘Jess’? I’m glad you care so deeply for the great white sharks that you want to raise awareness. You ought to know that I’m kind to every great white shark I run into around here in OKLAHOMA!!!!! Which, if you didn’t know already is a LANDLOCKED STATE!!!!!!! Sgt. Knight said that you did a great job putting up the posters, though. Since you got so bored of your filming in Guthrie that you had to fall back to your hobby, maybe you are in the wrong line of work. Maybe you could make a living applying wallpaper in homes or possibly billboard maintenance. You could be the cutest billboard technician evah!

OBTW – I really liked Dark Angel, and my wife thinks that she may want to highlight her hair like you’ve had yours recently. Please don’t glue anything to my house.

*Cheesy telegraph beeping sound* UPDATE:

As it turns out, I may have underestimated Jessica Alba. You did the right thing, kid. All hope may not yet be lost.