After watching The Expendables I can now officially declare that my movie-butt-kicking-quota for the rest of this year, and next, has been met. Sylvester Stallone leads a group of macho tough guys (Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Randy Couture, and Terry Crews) who accept a job that the U.S. military can’t or won’t do. It turns out there’s a really bad dictator on an island somewhere in South America. There’s an even worse American mafia type who is paying the dictator to produce drugs with the forced assistance of the island populace. Someone high up in our government wants the evil island dictator overthrown. That lays the emotional groundwork to justify annihilating hundreds of bad guys who are oppressing the pleasant island folk, that is exactly what happens. There are tons of cool special effects, a truckload of gunfire, explosions galore, running and ducking, martial arts action, old-fashioned fistfights, and pretty slick knife throwing. The dialogue is snappy and quick, and you don’t have to wait too long between action takes. That way, you don’t get bored between scenes waiting for someone else to get his rear summarily delivered to the morgue. There wasn’t a lot of cussing, and gladly there were no nudity or sex scenes. There were two “babes” and both of them needed rescuing–which Stallone’s muscle-flexing ensemble was more than willing to undertake.
The Expendables is definitely a guy movie, and it probably isn’t a flick you would want to take your date to unless she has a thing for watching a bunch of tough guys doing a lot of butt-kicking.
Did I enjoy the movie? Surprisingly, yes.
