The Expendables

The Expendables

After rejuvenating his career and saving Rocky and Rambo from the depths of crappiness, Sylvester Stallone turned his attention to the straight action movie. This is old school action. when men were manly men, good is good, bad is bad, and the explosions are big. Simply put, The Expendables is Stallone's love letter to the big, dumb 80's action movie.

And like a dumb 80's action movie, the plot is pretty simple. The Expendables are a rugged group of mercenaries led by Stallone that is hired to take down a dictator in a small Latin American island. Done. Synopsis over.

But look at the cast he's assembled to play his combatants! Stallone is joined from the some of the big tough guys of the last twenty years - Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Mickey Rourke, and Terry Crews (plus a nice cameo from Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger). That's an impressive roster of muscle.

Unfortunately, Stallone is a little too accurate to the 80's action film because he picks up the bad parts elements of the genre as well as the good. So that means the women characters are all there to be saved by our heroes and have no role or personality other than that. It also means the writing is stiff and the humor...well, these guys are all trying really, really hard to be funny. They want to be witty, spitting out one-liners and little jabs at each other, but it is all forced and painfully unfunny. For example, the big joke of one scene is when Statham introduces himself and Stallone to a pretty girl by saying, "I'm Buda and he's Pest." Hahahah, it's a pun, get it? Budapest! It's a city in Hungary! Plus, he called Stallone a pest. Hahahahaha.

Sigh.

The movie is full of awkward dialogue like this. I guess Stallone didn't learn something very important that two decades of hindsight should have given him. The 80's one liners were rarely funny unless they were spoken by Arnold. He's the only action star who could combine bad ass and comedy so effortlessly. Everybody else was just trying too hard. This movie shows that this rule still rings true.

But that's not to say the movie is all bad. If it is one thing we lost since the heyday of the action movie, it's that now every movie needs to have story arcs, character development, and all that fancy stuff that makes for good cinema. But what Stallone understands is that these movies aren't meant to be good cinema. They are meant to be explosive and fun. Who wants character development? I just want to see Stallone knock the crap out of Steve Austin! Instead of each character having a subplot, we wait for each character to have his big 'action' moment. And Stallone is nice and gives each character a standout fight, which is nice to see. He takes advantage of his cast's prowess.

So there you go. Once the characters stop talking and start punching, it movie starts to become a whole lot of fun. So good for Stallone for resurrecting a certain type of movie in all its good and bad glory. If this is your type of thing, you're in for a treat! 

BEST LINE: Yin (Jet Li): "I need more money. I work harder than the rest." Barney (Stallone): "No, you don't." Yin: "Yes, I do. Everything is harder for me. When I'm hurt the wound is bigger, because I am smaller. When I travel, I need to go farther."

MVP: This one is easy. As fun as it was to watch all these tough guys in a movie together, they were all upstaged by one thing - the automatic shotgun. Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) has a shotgun that he brags about early, and then you kind of forget about it. But when he unleashes that puppy during the movie's climactic battle...WOW. Best word to describe it.

TRIVIA: Stallone tried to gather even more old school tough guys for the movie, including Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Siegal, and Wesley Snipes. They all couldn't participate for one reason or another. Well, there's always the sequel!  UPDATE: So the sequel is has now come out and sure enough, Stallone nabbed some nice additions to his cast, throwing Van Damme and Chuck Norris into the mix, along with bigger parts for Schwarzenegger and Willis.  For the third film, I hear he is hunting Wesley Snipes and Harrison Ford!

The #1 Best Christmas Movie of All Time: DIE HARD

Die Hard

You heard it right! Die Hard is not only the greatest action movie of all time, it is the greatest Christmas movie of all time. "Hey, James," you might argue, "just because the movie takes place during Christmas doesn't mean that it is a Christmas movie."

That's true.  But I really do think Die Hard is a great Christmas movie - why, it has all the staples of the Christmas movie genre all integrated and manipulated (some would say perverted) into a nice little explosive package. Both 'Ode to Joy' and 'Jingle Bells' make appearances on the soundtrack. There are Christmas presents ("show him the watch") and Christmas miracles (the FBI). I could even argue that the main story is a re-envisioning of the classic tale of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Rudolph (New York cop John McClane) arrives at a new and unusual place, the North Pole (Los Angeles) where he is out-of-place and unwelcome. At the Christmas party, it is clear that no one wants him there, and they won't let him play their reindeer games. But then a crisis occurs and a horrible blizzard covers the earth (terrorists take over the building) and the reindeer (LA locals) don't know what to do - Oh, no! Christmas is ruined!! But luckily, thanks to Rudolph's shiny nose (a gun and McClane's badassness), Christmas is saved (and a bunch of bad guys are blown up). It is too perfect!

In all seriousness, we all know Die Hard is a great film and I hope we have all seen it. The direction by John McTiernan (Predator) is smooth and intense. Jan de Bont's cinematography is superb, and reminds me how much talent this man has, despite the fact that he went on to become a director of lame films like Twister. The script by Jeb Stuart and Steven de Souza is probably their best work, equally tense and laugh out loud funny. And then there is the cast. This movie made Bruce Willis a star, and deservedly so. His performance as John McClane, the smug, cocky every man is amazing, someone we can instantly relate to and more importantly, believe in. There is nothing super human about McClane in the first Die Hard, unlike the character in the sequels and the heroes in countless other action movies. He gets hurt. A lot. And who does the hurting? Why, arguably the greatest bad guy in movie history, Hans Gruber, deliciously played by Alan Rickman. Hans is so smooth and calculating, you almost want him to win. Almost...

What I like most about the movie is the details - here is one you may not have noticed. The elevator is almost a character; it serves as the harbinger of bad things to come. Without fail, when you hear the elevator bing, something bad always happens. Next time you watch the movie, pay attention and you will see what I mean. I know this is intentional because what happens at the end of the movie when the elevator bings? It fricking explodes. A lovely little punchline to a subtle, running joke!

Okay, enough already. You've seen it. Go see it again. It's that good!


BEST LINE: In a movie full of brilliant lines, I feel I should quote the one that best sums up the holiday spirit of the movie:

Theo: [over the CB] "All right, listen up guys. 'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except... the four assholes coming in the rear in standard two-by-two cover formation. "


MVP: The Grinch who almost stole Christmas himself, Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. As good as Bruce Willis is, Rickman provided him with the perfect foil. His snake-like performance is cultured, polite, unassuming and absolutely more terrifying than all those loud, over-the-top, showy villains that dominated 80s action films put together. Who else could make a casual conversation about brand name suits sound so menacing?


TRIVIA: Bruce Willis is a lucky man. Almost every leading man in Hollywood turned down this movie (I have no idea why). But the script was read and passed on by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, and even Richard Gere before Bruce Willis got his hands on it.

OSCARS NOMINATIONS: Best Editing, Visual Effects, Sound Effects Editing, and Sound.