Is Sly Stallone Expendable?

Last night I went to see the new action packed, never before seen, over the top adventure flick from Sylvester Stallone. Now I'm like the next guy, I love a good Sly Stallone movie. I loved Rocky, I thought Rambo was cool in the eighties, but it's been a while since he made a movie that I really liked. This movie was pretty fucking cool. It's not going to change cinema with acting and or script writing and honestly if you thought it would, you're a fucking idiot. This is a shoot 'em up action movie with little to no plot and lots of shit blowing the fuck up. And did I mention there might be some action in this movie? Well there was.

Thursday night, two friends and I took my new truck up to the theater to see The Expendables. I went in with low expectations on acting and script and high expectations on actions and 'splosions. I wasn't surprised or let down in any way. This movie has plenty of stars in it. We all know that Rocky is in this movie, but there are plenty more action stars filling out the rest of the cast. Terry Crews, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Eric Roberts, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah Arnold is only in it for like twelve seconds and Bruce is in it for forty seconds, but their both there. It's really too bad that Chuck Norris and Steven Segal had to be such douche bags, but I guess it's their loss.

This movie has action, LOTS OF FUCKING ACTION. It's pretty much non-stop from the beginning to the end. I went to a theater with a sound system that could make you shit your pants with bass and volume, so this movie was going to be a test of my man diapers. I wore a plastic shield to keep my shorts from getting a bacon strip and that was a good thing. This movie was turned up REALLY LOUD!!! I have never heard a movie this loud before. The gunshots were as loud as real gunshots. The explosions turned my stomach to jelly and it was awesome. I loved it.

The movie is fairly basic in nature, hell who am I kidding, it's fucking juvenile as far as script, but you know what, who cares. It's an action movie with explosions, muscles and fight sequences. It's not "The English Patient" and it never claims to be. The Expendables are a geriatric group of mercenaries that do what needs to be done for the right price. Sly is the leader and he's approached by a man who calls himself "Mr. Church", Bruce Willis and is asked to kill the leader of a drug cartel on some fake island in some jungle infested area of the planet. Yeah we've heard this before, about twelve million times, but again I say, who the fuck cares.

Sly decides to recon the island with Stathom and after investigating they decide not to take the job. However Stallone meets this really hot chick and gets a boner for her. Why he doesn't just take most doctors advice and seek a doctor after a boner lasting more than four hours is beyond me, but again it's not a logical movie, just a action flick. The hot chick, who really cares what her name is, gets stranded on the island as they leave in a flourish of action and bullet casings so when Sly goes home, he feels guilty for leaving her in such danger. At this point he decides to go back to rescue her. I'm leaving out a tiny plot twist here for good reason, it's really the only thing that might surprise you at this point, but one of the group members that Sly fires comes back in a big way.

After having a heart to boxers face discussion with Rourke, Sly decides he loves this chick and wants to dive into her pink umbrella, but if she dies on the island, he won't be able to do that. He plans to go back by himself and fix that problem. Meanwhile his group is so loyal to him that they all volunteer to go with him. It's one those choke up moments where you pretend it's not emotional, but those kind of moments in movies give me the tinglies. So they all go back and kill the fuck out of everyone. They destroy things that don't even need destroying, but hell they make great explosions, so they blow them the fuck up. Eric Roberts, who shockingly is playing a bad guy, gets a knife the size of harp shoved through his chest and the movie ends. I think I mentioned it before, but by this point in the movie, I have crapped myself at least three times from the sheer volume of the movie, but during the last twelve minutes of action, the volume somehow seems to get even louder and now my bowels are just leaking out of control. Do I really care, well not really, because the action is damn good.

This movie suffers from a lack of script, but it makes up for it with tons of kick ass action. There is also a small part in the movie that reminds me of "True Lies" which focuses on Stathom and the always ugly Charisma Carpenter. For some reason she left Stathom and he wants her big breasts back and finds out she's dating someone else. This other guy ends up hitting her which ends up being a bad decision on his part. During a basketball game Stathom finds the guy, along with like five of his friends and really messes those fuckers up. I mean it's really bad, something you would surely get arrested for, but Stathom just rides away on his motorcycle and leaves them broken on the court. It's really awesome.

Overall this movie scores a strong B for me. It is what is it and never claims to be more than that. It's a fun movie, with incredible sound and action. Did I also mention the gore in this movie, it's approaching "Rambo" in the amount of blood that comes out of people. Is the blood almost completely CGI, well yeah, but I can look past that. If you like action films and don't expect much substance to plot, this movie is fucking awesome. If you want "The Pianist", then don't see this movie. I think this movie is better than the A-Team though, which I know isn't saying much, but that movie really bombed in my mind. -Michael