20131003: Action Review--The Expendables 2

The Expendables 2

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, released 2012, 102 minutes, rated R, action-adventure.
2. IMDB: 6.7/10.0 from 157,313 users; estimated budget, 92 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 65% on the meter; 61% from 309,375 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.9/5.0 from 1,482,945 ratings.
5. Directed by: Simon West.  Screenplay: Richard Wenk, Sylvester Stallone.
6. Starring: Sylvester Stallone as Barney Ross, Jason Statham as Lee Christmas, Jet Li as Yin Yang, Dolph Lundgren as Gunnar Jensen, Chuck Norris as Booker, Bruce Willis as Church, Jean-Claude Van Damme as 'Vilain', Liam Hemsworth as Billy the Kid, Nan Yu as Maggie.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The opening job is an extravaganza of bullets and explosions.  It's successful.


2. After they come back, Church (CIA contact) gives Barney an ultimatum: do a job or clear up that 5 million USD misunderstanding or go to jail.  Maggie comes along as per Church's orders, and they retrieve an object from a safe, only to be hijacked by Vilain.  Vilain kills Billy to get respect.  Right.  The team decides to track down Vilain, who runs a mercenary for hire crew that tends to be on the opposite side of what Barney does.


3. The lost object contains the location of a mine where the Russians store plutonium.  The Bulgarian locations looked like a picture from 50 years ago. They meet up with Booker, who helps them in a fire fight.


4. They encounter a group called the Sangs, who kidnap the men and teen boys to work in the mines.  They set about to do in the Sangs, and recover the plutonium.  When things look bad, Booker, Church, and Trench drop by with extra resources.  There was a huge amount of shooting and dying.


5. The movie more or less ends with the climactic fight between Van Damme and Stallone.


6. In the end, Barney is all even with the CIA, the bad guys are defeated, and the plutonium is in safer hands.  Even more, the sequel is setup.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Needed a better screenplay, better lighting, more involved acting.
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 I expected better from a 92 million dollar budget.


2. Sound: 7/10 Conversations often dip a bit low for my taste.


3. Acting: 6/10  Big plus to Jet Li, for skill.  Otherwise, some of the performances could have been phoned in.


4. Screenplay: 6/10 There were too many incidences of "we're in trouble, now someone will drop by to bail us out" for my taste.