I'm Back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating: 6/10 (19 January 2013)

The first thing I want to say about this film is "Arnold's back!" and in classic Arnold style you can expect bad acting, bad scripting, and a lot of action.
I have to admit I wasn't a big fan of the first Expendables movie. If all you want to know is if the sequel is better you don't have to look far, it defiantly is. From the start of the movie the message is clear. Huge guns, lots of explosions, and one-liners spit out at a mile a minute.
The cast of characters is even bigger this time around. If I say Rambo, The Terminator, and John MCclane all together on one screen and you say "Who?" stop reading right now, this movie is not for you. On the other hand if that sounds like a dream come true, there will be some memorable moments to look forward to. Of all the actors I'd say Jason Statham had the best performance. If you asked me to rate him I'd say it was okay. That doesn't say much for the state of the acting as a whole. It's a very mixed bag. The main problem is the script. It feels almost B movie quality with some brilliant lines mixed in. Stallone, Statham, Liam Hemsworth were in the upper tier of acting while everyone else was on a small level below. Chuck Norris even makes an appearance. I'm sorry to say that he had the worst delivery of his lines. You could tell he had not acted in ages. Of course he did have time to drop a Chuck Norris joke that I've already heard a million times. He kind of redeemed himself at the end though. His appearance was more of a cameo anyway. Arnold Schwarzenegger had to be my favorite. He wasn't on screen for very long but I had a huge grin on my face whenever he was. He has the best one-liners, I was laughing so hard I had to rewind it to hear what I missed. In fact, this one is somewhat of an attempted comedy. It borders on parody sometimes. This movie won't be mentioned at the Oscars any time soon.
This move is not really about acting, script, or even storyline. It's about all the best action stars getting on one screen and blowing you away by the action. The action consists of shoot outs, fist fights, explosive detonations, and knife fights all while the heroes never die and the bad guys always do. It's humorously over the top. I love near the end when Arnold has a shotgun and he's just blowing away everybody, just awesome. The scene at the end is really the redeeming part of the whole movie. Everyone's in a huge airport show down with Van Damme and his thugs. Statham has the coolest fights with his knives. He slices and dices his way through a bunch of thugs with style. There is a cool fight between Stallone and Van Damme at the end. It was very brutal. Van Damme delivered his signature kick with surprising athletic ability. He still has it after all these years.
The technical aspects were only okay. You could obviously tell when they used CG. Sometimes the plane would be flying and it looked like it was just added into the picture. The music was nothing to write home about, typical pump up action movie stuff. I guess it does the job though. All in all the most important thing was the shooting and hand to hand combat and they both looked good.
In summary, I did enjoy the movie despite its many flaws. I'd say rent this one or wait for it to come to Netflix. I would give it a 6.5/10 tkubas1.wordpress.com