Thursday 19 August 2010

What is this I don't even...

What: The Expendables (such an appropriate tittle)

Who: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger (Jake Gyllenhaal has NOTHING on this guy), Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke

When: August 13th


I love films where shooting at stuff makes it blow up, I really do. Actually, I think they're the only reason why the cinema was invented. People in the nineteenth century wanted to watch carriages crash into each other and explode so someone had to come up with a safe way to make that happen (in case you're wondering, this explanation is 100% historically accurate). I can assure you that no one pays good money to watch a film about eating and praying and... loving (must...fight...gag reflex...) in a room with a giant screen and surround sound.

However, as much as I love violent movies with really big guns and explosions fueled by sheer will-power, sometimes they take a wrong turn somewhere and turn out just awful. I believe that's what happened with "The Expendables". Judging by the trailer, one would assume it's a complete awesomefest but nooooo..."The Expendables" is a train wreck and not even the kind you can't stop looking at. It's the kind that's so bad you have to cover your eyes in terror when you pass by. I mean, they started off ok with the whole "blowing up people in half and hanging pirates" thing but it was downhill from there.



When I discovered the dialogues had been written by Stallone I wondered if he was any good at writing but, hey, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The sad thing is... I shouldn't have. The man can't write to save his life. Sure, even dimwitted morons can come up with a half-decent script (where would Hollywood be now if they couldn't?) but, usually, they don't try to be very clever. They just toss out a linear story-line and call it a day. Stallone wants to have his cake and eat it too, he tries to be very dark and serious but then makes pathetic attempts to be funny that just come off as awkward and forced (yes, Jet Li is short... hardy har har... move along...). When it comes to action movies you're either really really serious and go all "Jason Bourne" on us or you don't and make stuff like Die Hard or The A-team. What you can't do is try to have it both ways.



However, the dialogues aren't the only bad thing in this movie. I can handle awful writing if it's kept to a minimum and if there's awesome fighting sequences to balance it out. But the thing is... the action scenes sucked big time. The blood was incredibly fake, the explosions were very... "meh" and I think they could have done a better job at stabbing Eric Roberts with a saber (I really really dislike Eric Roberts...).



The female characters were also ridiculous. Filmmaking people everywhere: if you're going to put annoying girls in action movies make sure they either end up dead or are mind boggling hot.


So...yeah, "The Expendables" is an awful film: bad writing, bad acting, bad action scenes, bad everything. Come on, it ended with Jason Statham reciting a very crappy Haiku-like thingy. How much worse can it get?

Rating: Pretty Crappy

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