The Expendables-The Review
Last night I went to see a late screening of The Expendables. Here is the review.
Expendables-A Review
As a projectionist myself, the idea of taking out the splicer to recut a movie often crosses my mind. Of course we never do it. And we never do that thing from Fight Club either. But we often do think we could take the parts of a fair movie and make it a better movie. Seriously, don’t you think the recent redux of King Kong would have been so much better if about 90% of the first hour were cut out? And how about that painfully bad romantic scene from the Star Wars prequel where Anikan Skywalker rides and is thrown from a space cow in an attempt to impress Princess Amidala. It was cut from the IMAX version of the film so the print would fit on the giant IMAX film platters. I swear it made it a much better movie. So as I sat in the audience watching the plot unfold of The Expendables, I couldn’t help my little projectionist brain from thinking there must be ways to make this movie just a little better.
The problem with The Expendables is it has so much raw potential. No doubt about it, its a hoot to see virtually every action hero from the last decade appear in some way in this movie. Even Schwartzenegger took a break from being governor of California to do about five minutes of screen time in this flick. I’m told the few people who do not appear in this movie actually were asked but for reasons only their own inflated egos could possibly answer, they turned the opportunity down. But all the muscle bound movie stars in Hollywood cannot completely rescue this movie from being mediocre.
The action is great. The fight scenes are great. And God knows they do try to blow absolutely everything in this movie up. But that’s still not enough.
Ok, here’s what I think is missing. Believe it or not, a movie that is this formulamatic needs a more formulamatic plot. I think it actually needed to be simpler.
In The Expendables, Sylvester Stallone leads a group of mercenaries who are getting weary with “the life” of ... well... killing people. Nearly every one of the main ten or twelve characters... I lost count... have a moment to ponder what it might be like to have a normal family life, a woman to curl up with at night, some place to call home... blah blah blah. We kind of got that from every other action movie ever made. So revisiting that a half dozen times in the first hour of the movie feels like someone tied a boat anchor to a formula one race car. Even the bad guys are overly complicated. There is an evil South American dictator who has been led astray by a rogue American CIA agent to produce cocaine crops but the dictator regrets his ways when he finds out his adult daughter disapproves and is working covertly against him.
See what I mean?
In a movie with this much Hollywood fire power all we need to know is that there are some bad guys at the business end of all the ammunition that are about to be fired.
Ok, WARNING SPOILER ALERTS PAST THIS POINT.
Oddly enough the movie opens this way. The team is called in to take out a ship load of Somali Pirates. We all know Somali Pirates are bad guys because of the news and because its the latest evil stereotype to be overused in Hollywood today. In a way they make the perfect cartoony target for so much make believe violence. We get to see how effective these good guys are at their jobs and when the carnage is done, we’re ready for them to set up the next set of bad guys like the next frame of pins in a bowling frame. But that’s where the movie goes wrong. Instead of just setting up the next big action sequence we get a lot of moments of thuggy muscle bound action stars actually trying to act melancholy. I know, right. What guy wants their action heros to pine away valuable screen time brooding about how their lives might be different if they had normal lives... But then we would not have just spent $12 to watch them in a movie, would we?
The movie does muddle forward and it does provide some great action moments. Unfortunately the best one happens in the MIDDLE of the movie. This is when Stallone and fellow actioneer Jason Statham narrowly escape the evil dictators forces. To show they are still bad asses despite running away, they turn their old sea plane around and strafe the baddies who are still lingering on the dock below in a maneuver that is clever and original and ...well... admittedly awesome. But again its in the MIDDLE of the movie. Nothing else that happens in the movie past that point is clever or original. Past that point the whole movie is part ultimate fighting match and part pyrotechnic display... sometimes both.
Are the fight scenes good? Sure. Again just as its entertaining to watch an ultimate fighting match, this movie has the same entertainment value. But after a while its hard to distinguish which muscle bound guy were actually supposed to be rooting for. And apparently that was a problem for the screen writer (Stallone) too because one of the bad guys becomes one of the good guys at the end despite the fact that this guy tried literally to kill two of the main characters and set them up for the giant double cross in the end. But in this movie thats not enough to break up the team?
In the end this movie is what might have happened if a projectionist had access to all of the biggest action movies of the last decade and a splicer.
As a projectionist myself, the idea of taking out the splicer to recut a movie often crosses my mind. Of course we never do it. And we never do that thing from Fight Club either. But we often do think we could take the parts of a fair movie and make it a better movie. Seriously, don’t you think the recent redux of King Kong would have been so much better if about 90% of the first hour were cut out? And how about that painfully bad romantic scene from the Star Wars prequel where Anikan Skywalker rides and is thrown from a space cow in an attempt to impress Princess Amidala. It was cut from the IMAX version of the film so the print would fit on the giant IMAX film platters. I swear it made it a much better movie. So as I sat in the audience watching the plot unfold of The Expendables, I couldn’t help my little projectionist brain from thinking there must be ways to make this movie just a little better.
The problem with The Expendables is it has so much raw potential. No doubt about it, its a hoot to see virtually every action hero from the last decade appear in some way in this movie. Even Schwartzenegger took a break from being governor of California to do about five minutes of screen time in this flick. I’m told the few people who do not appear in this movie actually were asked but for reasons only their own inflated egos could possibly answer, they turned the opportunity down. But all the muscle bound movie stars in Hollywood cannot completely rescue this movie from being mediocre.
The action is great. The fight scenes are great. And God knows they do try to blow absolutely everything in this movie up. But that’s still not enough.
Ok, here’s what I think is missing. Believe it or not, a movie that is this formulamatic needs a more formulamatic plot. I think it actually needed to be simpler.
In The Expendables, Sylvester Stallone leads a group of mercenaries who are getting weary with “the life” of ... well... killing people. Nearly every one of the main ten or twelve characters... I lost count... have a moment to ponder what it might be like to have a normal family life, a woman to curl up with at night, some place to call home... blah blah blah. We kind of got that from every other action movie ever made. So revisiting that a half dozen times in the first hour of the movie feels like someone tied a boat anchor to a formula one race car. Even the bad guys are overly complicated. There is an evil South American dictator who has been led astray by a rogue American CIA agent to produce cocaine crops but the dictator regrets his ways when he finds out his adult daughter disapproves and is working covertly against him.
See what I mean?
In a movie with this much Hollywood fire power all we need to know is that there are some bad guys at the business end of all the ammunition that are about to be fired.
Ok, WARNING SPOILER ALERTS PAST THIS POINT.
Oddly enough the movie opens this way. The team is called in to take out a ship load of Somali Pirates. We all know Somali Pirates are bad guys because of the news and because its the latest evil stereotype to be overused in Hollywood today. In a way they make the perfect cartoony target for so much make believe violence. We get to see how effective these good guys are at their jobs and when the carnage is done, we’re ready for them to set up the next set of bad guys like the next frame of pins in a bowling frame. But that’s where the movie goes wrong. Instead of just setting up the next big action sequence we get a lot of moments of thuggy muscle bound action stars actually trying to act melancholy. I know, right. What guy wants their action heros to pine away valuable screen time brooding about how their lives might be different if they had normal lives... But then we would not have just spent $12 to watch them in a movie, would we?
The movie does muddle forward and it does provide some great action moments. Unfortunately the best one happens in the MIDDLE of the movie. This is when Stallone and fellow actioneer Jason Statham narrowly escape the evil dictators forces. To show they are still bad asses despite running away, they turn their old sea plane around and strafe the baddies who are still lingering on the dock below in a maneuver that is clever and original and ...well... admittedly awesome. But again its in the MIDDLE of the movie. Nothing else that happens in the movie past that point is clever or original. Past that point the whole movie is part ultimate fighting match and part pyrotechnic display... sometimes both.
Are the fight scenes good? Sure. Again just as its entertaining to watch an ultimate fighting match, this movie has the same entertainment value. But after a while its hard to distinguish which muscle bound guy were actually supposed to be rooting for. And apparently that was a problem for the screen writer (Stallone) too because one of the bad guys becomes one of the good guys at the end despite the fact that this guy tried literally to kill two of the main characters and set them up for the giant double cross in the end. But in this movie thats not enough to break up the team?
In the end this movie is what might have happened if a projectionist had access to all of the biggest action movies of the last decade and a splicer.