Brawn over Brain for your ticket.

Rating: 6/10 (21 August 2010)

Graced by tons of muscles, grit and explosive firepower, this is the Golden Age 80's action genre reliving itself in modern theatres this month. With 7 major sets of Hollywood muscles working themselves out on the big screen, you will be buying more brawn than brain with your ticket.
Reckon we've just listed a long list of action heroes and to add on, there's also retired Expendables member - Tool (Mickey Rourke) who delivers all the non-lethal substance. Tool's emotional extreme close-up scene of war-inflicted psychological trauma was the only one that came from the muscular line-up to melt hearts, while the rest served to only stab hearts.
Stingy dialogue lines are delivered by the cast, as they are mostly one-line punchers, but a healthy dosage of humour filled some of them. The fun derives from said humour and later on, the saturated watts of firepower and violence that were a product of the strong egos. Speaking of which, Stallone did a good job in handling all the egos without having these veterans feel individualistic all in vie of screen time.
By having rapid cuts of intense action for the climatic royal rumble in the closing chapter.
The closing action scene is indeed one grand finale as Stallone leaves the best for the last with massive explosions, lethal projectile buffet, fierce close-quarter combat exchanges and everything Hollywood once threw in for classic action genre closures.
It wasn't a bad thing, hell yeah.
Stallone isn't the best directing action choreographer in the business, but he has reminded us of how veteran glory has been achieved in the past decades through classics like Rocky, Rambo, The Terminator, and Die Hard. He isn't exactly full of himself as a veteran, as he leaves space for the young blood to prove their worth with the likes of Jason Statham.
Amidst all the male testosterone smeared across the film, we do love how these sturdy men own little bits of big boy moments where they do share their hearts out and talk about their love affairs and comfort each other's soul. All in the name of brotherhood. Statham is seen hurling Stallone a question in the film as follows.
"Have you ever been rejected by a woman before?"
Already in the talks of a sequel as Stallone expresses an idea in mind recently, we are certain of how Hollywood works after all these years. Just like how it's mentioned in the film, "We don't care what the business is about, the only thing you need to know is the job's real, and the money's real".
If you are able to discount the story-telling hindsight and view this as a classic 80's genre reliving, Stallone brings on some raw and fierce action in blatantly painful fashion and shows that he still has it despite being at the age of 64.