{"id":11052,"date":"2010-08-25T07:55:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-24T23:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/08\/25\/the-expendables\/"},"modified":"2018-03-14T10:43:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T02:43:50","slug":"the-expendables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/08\/25\/the-expendables\/","title":{"rendered":"The Expendables"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-expendables-01\" The Expendables<\/em><\/strong> (2010) \u2013 AMK Hub; last Saturday morning. Back in the late 80\u2019s, the three \u2018big\u2019 action-film stars that were churning out box office hits were Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis. There was frequent talk about attempts to get these three \u2013 or heck, even just two of them \u2013 into the same film. Sort of like a made in heaven pairing along the lines of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.<\/p>\n

Time has long gone and past. Arnold\u2019s now a Governor, Willis never lost steam, and Stallone was low-key for a while with just a couple of personal projects running before coming back to the forefront with new films wrapping up two key characters he was most closely identified with: Rocky and Rambo.<\/p>\n

So, hats off to Stallone for pulling it altogether for this new film that sees the three of them together and as a tidy bonus also starring more recent action-film actors. He\u2019s assembled quite a cast for his new film that he directed, wrote and starred in \u2013 and the list of actors include the threesome, former Olympic swimmer turned actor Jason Statham from the Transporter<\/em> series, Jet Li, and Mickey Rourke. Even Stallone\u2019s old nemesis from Rocky IV<\/em>, Dolph Lundgren shows up.<\/p>\n

The Expendables is the name of a band of mercenaries who take on jobs that the government routinely can\u2019t. Sort of like the A-Team. The lot are led by Ross (Stallone), his knife thrower Christmas (no kidding, and that\u2019s Statham), his vertically challenged but very kungfu expert Yang (Li), and the violent lunatic Jensen (Lundgren). The lot take on a job in a fictitious Latin American drug producing country that\u2019s now taken over by a former CIA operative in cahoots with its banana dictator.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s basically the film in a nutshell. There\u2019s no substantive character development, no subtlety, just lots of bullets flying about, mayhem and explosions. The film is quite a throwback to the loud and noisy action films of the 80s with larger than life characters, and film settings that would get panned today for their lack of realism. All explosions in this film seem to be napalm-driven, guns rarely run out of ammunition, and the a good bulk of the faceless bad guys don\u2019t even get screen time to show they get wounded first when they\u2019re shot. Every bullet fired by one of the Expendables is a kill shot in short.<\/p>\n

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The Expendables and their ridiculous berets.<\/span><\/p>\n

But hey, it\u2019s a Stallone film and if nothing else, the film isn\u2019t pretentious. The film is enjoyable, if at a superficial level without leaving lasting impressions once you walk out of the theatre.<\/p>\n

That said, there are still missed opportunities. The much anticipated scene between the Three Action Film Gods of \u201880s was a bit of a let down. For starters, if you watch carefully, you might notice that the three of them aren\u2019t really seen in the same frame apart from the last bit of it. There\u2019re plenty of camera angle switches as the three talk to each other in antagonist fashion \u2013 Arnold and Stallone are the competing and rival mercenary leaders, Willis is the job offerer \u2013 but a good part of the scene centers on Stallone and Willis together only. You start wondering if the Arnold was actually filming his scenes separately from the other two.<\/p>\n

The information I\u2019m gathering online says that\u2019s untrue \u2013 but if so, the film then did not leverage on the presence of the three greats. It would had been a real hoot to see Stallone, Arnold and Willis eyeballing each other in the same scene and in the same frame.<\/p>\n

The violence in the film might bother some too. Granted Stallone\u2019s Rambo<\/em> films have always taken gore right to the acceptable limit when they were each released in their time. If you think about the second, third and fourth Rambo<\/em> films for instance, the amount of blood splatter and limb explosions and amputations got increasingly ramped.<\/p>\n

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Bad guy about to get perforated.<\/span><\/p>\n

In The Expendables<\/em> though, the film\u2019s has reached a new high level in this regard, and some of it feels gratuitous. Like bad guys getting their hands chopped off, heads chopped off, bodies exploding midriff sort of thing. There\u2019s also a torture scene involving a woman victim that\u2019s a little disturbing to watch too.<\/p>\n

It sure gave me mixed feelings. On the one hand, the film is clearly a homage to all the old action films and its highlight is supposed to be the ensemble cast of action actors doing what they are best at. The film has stuff that the audience is supposed to take tongue in cheek. But on the other hand, the very high degree of realistic gore and violence seems to counteract that underlining none-too-serious tone. So, one minute you\u2019ll be chuckling as Christmas mouths off a funny line to Ross, but in the next minute, when some enemy soldiers get blown into pieces in very visceral ways, you might not be smiling anymore. Or maybe that was just me.<\/p>\n

Still, Ling liked the film and I thought it was still Ok. The best line in the film? Something about Arnold\u2019s political ambitions. That was a hoot.:)<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Expendables (2010) \u2013 AMK Hub; last Saturday morning. Back in the late 80\u2019s, the three \u2018big\u2019 action-film stars that were churning out box office hits were Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis. There was frequent talk about attempts<\/p>\n

Read More The Expendables<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}