Slightly superior to the first, but still makes you yearn for action's hey day rather than re live it

Rating: 7/10 (21 August 2012)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
After a successful mission in Nepal where Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger) was rescued, Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and his team of 'expendables' are celebrating a job well done. Until his old love/hate friend Church (Bruce Willis) tracks him down and offers him a job in exchange of avoiding prison: travel to China and retrieve a suitcase containing nuclear launch codes. The mission goes well, until him and his men find themselves accosted by Jean Villain (Jean Claude Van Damme) and his team of mercenaries, and one of their men is killed. Gunning for revenge, the group learn the villains are heading to Russia, where the suitcase contains the go codes for some buried plutonium.
The original Expendables film had unlimited box office potential in a number of ways. It set itself up very unpretentiously, a simple, no brainer, big budget action flick where head honcho Sly reunited all his old action buddies from the 80s/90s, and delivered a load of what the fan base had come to expect and demand, with some self depreciation par for the course. While I was left a bit underwhelmed by it, it certainly worked wonders at the box office and gave some long forgotten stars another big taste of the big screen again (even if it didn't quite re- ignite their careers there.) So, of course, a sequel has come along, albeit with new director Simon West (which naturally gives it a less of a feeling of being an ego trip) and extended screen time for giants of the genre Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The action delivers as thick and fast as you'd imagine, but it's all slightly too noisy, harshly filmed, lumbering and unsubtle, bigger and badder than the old days but not better. The script tries it's hardest at decent dialogue, but it really comes to life with the obvious but admittently rib tickling in jokes and self sending up (to wit, at the end, Arnie telling Bruce he'll 'be back', only to be told he's 'been back once too often, let me be back for once.' His answer? 'Yippee Key Eh'), which adds to the welcome feeling of it all not taking itself too seriously. The best thing about it is actually Van Damme as the villain, surprisingly charismatic and convincingly sadistic, while new comer Scott Adkins also displays some un nerving presence as his henchman. Unbelievably (and certainly sadly) the worst thing about it emerges as Chuck Norris, not on his part but at the way his character ridiculously emerges out of nowhere while all the action's going. His presence here just feels like an unsuccessful send up of his Lone Wolf McQuade character, and it doesn't work.
West's style and delivery make this emerge as more of a success than the undelivering original, and while it's still not the action masterpiece I wanted it to be, it's still a fair bit above bog standard. ***