The Expendables post-script

I realize that it's very easy to beat up on The Expendables, for reasons mentioned in the review (there's basically no story to speak of, unless you count the Missing in Action by way of Commando story arc) and it's true that expectations are almost impossibly high for people who are going to see this (believe me, I just read a review that essentially argues the exact opposite position of what I wrote), but I still don't necessarily feel like arguing from expectation is necessarily fair. I brought up Snakes on a Plane in the review because Snakes on a Plane DOES NOT deliver on its ludicrous promise at any point in the film. It just doesn't. And I was not kind to Snakes on a Plane, but it wasn't because of the expectations, but rather from the fact that the movie was so uninteresting from beginning to end.

The Expendables has, admittedly, issues: while the car chases and intercut fights between Austin / Stallone and Li / Statham / Daniels are handled well, half of the Jet Li / Dolph Lundgren fight is a blurry mess of legs and foreground objects and Terry Crews is criminally underused (the reasonably bad acting by Randy Couture can be overlooked because of how little of the film he's in). I disagree, however, that Eric Roberts needed to play Munroe as a scenery chewing ham, or that this movie is really intended to be some kind of "send off" for the action films of yonder (or its cast, for that matter).

Since I actually know the person who wrote the aforementioned review (or at least, had a few classes with him), I'm not going to suggest that he's missing the point of the Schwarzenegger scene (which is, in fact, the "wish fulfillment" moment people assumed the running time of The Expendables was to constantly provide), or that Rourke's unfortunate speech is less about providing subtext in a ham-fisted way and more in keeping with Stallone's propensity to have one mopey speech (at least) since Rocky Balboa. Yes, it is a groaner, but I also knew it had to be there in the wake of Rambo, which balances speeches and crowd pleasing gore better. There's at least less proselytizing in The Expendables.

I also know that the reviewer is a big fan of the Crank movies - as the Cap'n is too - but where we differ is that I think they work too hard to undermine the tropes of action films in order to appear "better" than their subject manner. I brought that up in my Expendables review because Stallone isn't making a movie that's trying to be postmodern action; he's simply making an action movie that most people feel like they've outgrown. That being said, this is a theatrical extension of the so-called (and sometimes justifiably called) "inferior" DTV action film movement.

I get that it's not cool to enjoy a movie that relies on recycled tropes and that doesn't always deliver on something the ads promised ("Some movies have one action star. This movie has THEM ALL"), but it's hardly as bad as what passes itself for "action" most of the year. I get that Shoot 'Em Up, The Transporter, Crank, and the Bourne movies are where it's at now, but Rambo was as good as many of them and better than some. The Expendables may not be there, but I'll take a little irony-free action every now and then, warts and all.