Heartbreakingly Bad

Rating: 5/10 (1 September 2012)

I am 35 years old, a rather early age, but today when i saw a transport aircraft successfully land inside a mine, i can confidently say- Dear God, I have seen it all. I have seen the hammiest group of currently senior citizen actors in the history of moviedom to get together for a sequel of an already poor film to deliver something worse. Sylvester Stallone and his gang of bulletproof mercenaries with a fondness for taking on medium sized foreign armies are back again in The Expendables 2, and the only good thing in the flick is the concept.
Like its predecessor, Expendables 2 is a 80s action flick starring grizzled veterans of that era- the idea of seeing these ageing guys who just don't want to take their retirement benefits is better off as a concept only, than any actual movie. True, the mere thought of Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis and Norris firing away to glory in the SAME frame is stuff of wet dreams for most action fanboys- but only in concept, in dreams- in reality, when these 60+ fellas strut their stuff now, more than the body count, the profound thoughts that float in and out of the mind are mostly around who has done the better skin-lift, or who has the best hairdo, or the most effective botox shots or even the best body double.
For the records, there is a plot- and it is as clichéd as any action movie goes. As the first mission, the expendables put down a militia somewhere in the world, and the second mission gets personal- a team member gets killed and plutonium gets stolen, and all is left to our heroes to save the world, in addition to taking revenge. The really old gang of Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, and Dolph Lungdren are joined by new mate Liam Hemsworth and "combat proficient" Yu Nan. Willis, and Schwarzenegger do more than just talk this time round, and are joined by another veteran who went "missing in action" in the 80s – Chuck Norris. Keep it simple seems to be the mantra here- in reverence to their age, the Expendables fashionably hang out at a bar called The Old Point, even their transport aircraft is WW2 vintage, and the villain of this set piece, Jean Claude Van Damme is cleverly named Villain, too. Stallone looks like a genetic experiment gone hideously wrong and his old age must be the reason he doesn't see Yu Nang batting eyelids at him throughout. These "has beens" speak exclusively in punchlines from their older movies. And when Stallone goes philosophical ("Why is it the ones who deserve to die keep on living?") and Dolph Lungren is the film's comic relief, you got to fear for your sanity. Quite late in the movie though- Arnold unintentionally utters the sole truthful line in the movie- " We all belong to a museum".
The Expendables begin with a normally over the top rescue mission in Nepal where they blow up seemingly, the entire Nepalese army, to smithereens. There is a ropeway shootout, a speedboat chase and armoured truck race lasting all about 15 minutes, and all culminating in the opening credits. This is the point where if we are in a mall, it would be the best time to actually step out, do some shopping, eat a bit, look at beautiful women- do something useful, because the next hour is perhaps the most boring hour in the history of action movies, and that includes all the solo actioners these guys have ever featured. You could make your way back in time for the even more over the top climactic 15 minutes, and my take is you would have probably seen the entire action director Simon West has got in store for you in this movie, which though is deliciously graphic, but falls short both in quantity and quality. True, heads gets splattered, limbs get decapitated, there are creative knife throwing sequences, lots of things eventually explode, van Damme roundhouses, Arnold and Willis do manage to fit into a SmartCar, and the heroes cheerfully grin and chomp cigars nonchalantly gunning down thousands, but nothing is memorable. Even the final bare knuckle fistfight between Stallone and Van Damme is an insult to memories of Rocky, Rambo and Bloodsport- they talk more than they fight and in that they resemble my kind- the civilized Bengali (ever seen Bongs fight?).
Jokes apart It probably hurts me more than anyone else because am a big time action fan and the 80s spawned some of the most unabashed movies in that genre. But with due respect, the last thing i wanted was memories of my childhood getting sullied by the atrocities of actors who still do not know their time is up.
Well then, its a travesty all right, and definitely not recommended. There is precious little of action, intelligence, wit and all things good that we expect out of a movie, and i am genuinely surprised at the positive opinions this movie has gathered till date. According to me Expendables 2 is forgettable, and sadly so -5/10