Expendaballs

Rating: 6/10 (21 August 2012)

Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) returns with his ultra-violent friends in this follow up to 2010's moderately enjoyable bloodbath. The sole purpose of 'Expendables 2' is to prove that baths can always be bloodier. I won't bother with the storyline because it's a line so thin that it is barely visible under the weight of all those throat-stabbings and Gatling-gun annihilations.
The noble point about this action porno, as with the first, is that it doesn't take it self seriously for a solitary second. Every word of dialogue is played for laughs. Bruce Willis, as the devious Church, has some funny, tongue-firmly-in-cheek interchanges with Arnie's Trench ('You've 'been back' often enough; it's my turn now'). This time The Governor has a meatier role, evoking performances from his 80s glory years.
'Con Air' Director Simon West knows there are too many characters, which is why Jet Li is excised from the script early on, albeit for dubious reasons. (Being an ethnic minority, he brings a new meaning to the term 'expendable'.) Mickey Rourke doesn't reprise his role, but the cast now includes Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme, who laughably turned downed a role in number one due to it being 'insubstantial'.
You'll wonder why you went back for more punishment, but if you leave your brain at home there's a good chance you'll join in the whooping and cheering as yet another army of goons are blown straight to hell. Number three will come when the guts from this one have been shovelled up and the blood has dried. Whatever mission these badasses are next recruited for, just expect World War III.
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