The Cabin in the Woods of action movies

Rating: 9/10 (28 August 2012)

To all the people who go into The Expendables 2 expecting a cohesive and well constructed plot or something to tide you over until The Great Gatsby comes out, why would you do that? The plot of The Expendables 2... well what plot. There is 5 tonnes of plutonium that the Russain's have left over from the Cold War that they were going to use for a mine and Van Damme wants it, that's it. If your looking for a deep human story, you won't find it here. What you will find however is some SWEET action sequences.
What The Expendables 2 does succeed in is giving you intense, balls to the walls action. You can tell exactly what you are in for from the get go. The Expendables 2 opens with an action sequence with explosions, heads exploding and 50 Cals tearing the holy hell out of everything and Alex smiled a lot, and apparently speaks in the third person now.
The acting is also what you expect. Sly is about as easy to understand as Batman (that's the Christian Bale Batman) speaking through Darth Vader's voice box, Jason Statham still sounds like he should be in The Sweeney and Chuck Norris is every bit as good as he was in Walker Texas Ranger, and I mean that sincerely *coughs*. The irony is the worst actor in everything else he is in, is the best actor in this, and surprisingly didn't annoy me. Yes that's right ladies and gentleman Liam Hemsworth was the best actor in this movie. However, undoubtedly the best part about The Expendables 2 is Van Damme who plays Villain, yes that is his name. His character makes you hate him enough that you want to see Sly go all Rambo on him.
What really shines in this movie, apart from the action, is the humour and the references to each of the actors movies. One of them is in the final scene of the movie when Arnie and Bruce Willis are tearing people apart Chuck Norris joins in and Arnie says "Ahhh, who's next, Rambo". My personal favourite is in the Chuck Norris reveal scene when Sly says "Is it true you we're bitten by a King Cobra" to which Chuck Norris replies "Yes it is,but after five days of agonising pain, the snake died" and I for one personally love that-they got a "Chuck Norris fact" in the mix.
The script is every bit as corny in places as you expect it to be. For example in one scene Jason Statham is dressed as a priest and when a group of Villain's goons come in he says "I know pronounce you, man and knife" at which point I cringed but that means that the script writer did his job. You can't be like "oh, I'm going to ding you on the script there buddy" because they meant for the script to be like that and that doesn't bother me as it was meant to be that way, they cheesiness of the script wasn't unintentional.
Overall The Expendables 2 is exactly what you expect it to be corny, over the top and incredible fun. Is it for everyone, hell no but for the ones who it is aimed at it is the best all out action film of the year and for me anyway the best all out action film I have ever seen