Stallone sucks at directing

Rating: 3/10 (3 September 2010)

Frankly speaking, I didn't expect the film to be so crappy. If it wasn't for all those action stars it would have had a -7.3. I wasn't skeptic about the movie before seeing it, oh no. I thought, yeah, Silvester did an awful job on Rambo IV, but maybe this time he hired people to show him a thing or two about directing. Maybe the guys who accepted to act in this movie wouldn't sign up for any lame production.
I thought Silvester had two options for a movie like this. Option A: a huge, epic action movie- one last stand with all they got. And then, after killing a lot of bad guys, despite all the wounds and suffering, our guys show that the true spirit of the action hero never dies and will never be forgotten. Option B- a clever, well-written movie with nice jokes to bring a nostalgic atmosphere.
So I went to the movie theater, sat there and waited to get sucked into the last "glory ride" of my childhood idols. But nothing happened. The story was so poorly told, the scenes were so terribly shot that one can't actually get into the movie. I couldn't go like "yeah, let's go get the bad guys!!!" Arnold's appearance was of pure commercial purpose, and the whole scene with him, Silvester and Bruce Willis- just terrible. It drags you out of the movie, into the CNN news update or something. 2 hours of fighting where you can't quite see what's happening, because of the so terribly shot action scenes- kicks and punches flying at short range, guns shooting in your face. Jet Lee is pathetic, he gets his ass kicked all the time, and so on, and so on...
Maybe it's just me, but I can't seem to enjoy the way Stallone tells the story. Robert Rodriguez would have done a lot better with both action scenes and story-telling.... And do you know what Sly failed to remember from his 80s action hero carrier? That in every milestone action movie our hero is not the toughest nor the strongest. There was always someone bigger and better than him, who kicks his ass. At the end, though it's not the muscles that win the day, but the true spirit and perseverance of the character. The 21-st century Vin Diesel style action ("I'm the baddest mother f****r, who kicks everybody's ass from the beginning to the end") is something Sly isn't known for. That is why in my opinion the movie isn't as dramatic as I would like.