Hit and miss muscle-headed love letter to the 80's.

Rating: 6/10 (5 September 2012)

This muscle-headed love letter to the 80's (and early 90's) vastly improves on its substandard predecessor, but remains frustratingly hit and miss. On one hand you have the action fan's wet dream of a cast – Sly, Arnie, Dolph, Jet Li, Willis, JCVD, Chuck, the Stath – and a few entertainingly bruising set pieces; on the flipside you have monotonous self-referential dialogue, some dodgy CGI and not enough Chuck. By far the best thing in the film, Norris' entrance is hilarious (it even manages to sneak in a Chuck joke) and promises further awesomeness, alas his role is sadly an extended cameo only. Randy Couture sorely misses out on a worthy hand to hand match-up, whilst Jason Statham is given a couple of sequences – the church fight is a highlight – to really shine and he doesn't let the opportunity slip. Van Damme is an amusingly wacky villain and Willis is in fine smart-arse form, however Arnie's attempted humour falls embarrassingly flat and Dolph Lundgren makes everyone else look like Oscar winning actors. A motion picture that, for better and for worse, delivers exactly what its target audience wants.