The Expendables: Oh the Fighting!

KABOOM! RAT A TAT TAT TAT! PISH POOM!! ehem... eh.. yeah. Sorry about that folks, but I just had to get that out of my system. It's not how I would normally start a review, but I am so pumped up about this movie, that I just had to relay how I felt about it. My inner child is finally satisfied.

The Expendables is a movie that many people are very divided on. Rotten Tomatoes is not in favor of this movie the last time I checked, and I don't really understand why. When I hear big names like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis, I think of enormously over the top kill-fests that are just fun, sit back and turn my brain off entertainment. When I want an 80's action movie, I want gigantic explosions, impossible scenarios, and over the top stunts. I want machine guns shooting out lead at anything and everything that moves, and I also want big stars in my movies as well.

The Expendable delivers. Sylvester Stallone has put together an all-star cast of people with the exceptions of Jean Claude Van-Damme and Steven Seagal (who made crappy movies even by the 80's standard). Other critics are giving it low scores because they are viewing this film as serious and meant to be taken in a mature manner. No! Nein! Non! I call foul to this. This movie is an 80's action movie through and through and it would be ridiculous to go into this movie thinking that the action is going to be a serious romp. It's not supposed to be. I may be young, 23, but even I have watched my fair share of these movies and I know that the romp of The Expendables is meant to call back to the golden days of action cinema. Enough about the other critics, lets get down to the movie itself.

The Expendables is about a group of mercenaries that are hired by the government to take care of business that the normal agencies wouldn't be able to do, without causing some sort of international problem. Bruce Willis works for one agency (FBI, CIA, etc. I'm not certain) and therefore he, along with Arnold Schwarzenegger, is only a brief cameo in this film. Arnold's exit scene however, is very funny and is one of the highlight jokes of the movie. The crew, comprised of Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Mickey Rourke, and Terry Crews (awesome!), must go to a small island in the gulf to meet with a contact. What originally becomes a "find the man behind the curtain" becomes a rescue operation for a woman that has been held captive. It's a simple plot but in the end it turns out to be a good one for this type of film. There are other stars in the movie, but I'm not going to spoil all of the names. After all, where's the fun in that?

The action in this movie is Double Rainbow intense: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX0D4oZwCsA . The hand to hand combat is extremely well done and some of the kills that Jason Statham performs with a knife, are brutal to say the least. What's so great about having such a large and diverse cast is that each actor has their own fighting style, and the movie really concentrates on this. Jason Statham and Jet Li both are very acrobatic with the crazy knife kills and Jet Li flying all over the place like a flippin' ninja. The bigger, beefer guys like Stallone and Couture fight in a very brutish, wrestling style, making everyone's overall hand to hand scenes very different and interesting.

The acting is very solid from all performers. Some reviews have really picked on Randy Couture a lot because he's not an actor. I think he did well. He's not in many speaking roles in the movie and I think that's a good thing, because it's not like we are watching a movie that acting plays a key role for our entertainment. This goes back to my earlier comments about people picking a movie apart that's supposed to emulate everything we love about the 80's. Get over it. Much like we didn't watch Transformers for the acting (totally for Megan Fox), we aren't watching this movie for acting either.

The Expendables brought me back to a time of when I was a bit younger. It made me feel like a kid again and then it smacked me and told me stop pooping my pants. I may have been born in the very late 1980's but I have been introduced to these movies later, and so I still appreciate the old action movies like Predator, Rambo, Die Hard, and Commando. I loved The Expendables, even down to the last bit of CG blood. There is CG blood in this movie, but honestly I wouldn't have known it was CG if I hadn't been told right before I went to go see it. So it doesn't detract anything from the movie. So go see it! Go see it NAO!!! Yeaow! GET TO DA CHOPPA!!! ehem... yeah.

Seriously go see this movie. It's enjoyable, it's funny, and it has so much fun action that made me go "oohhh" and "ahh" through most parts. When you see it, cause I know you will, watch Terry Crews the most because that guy is amazing. I don't put a rating in my reviews but I do make recommendations, and I highly recommend this movie to anyone that is a fan of Sylvester Stallone and 1980's action movies. GET TO ET NAOOOWWW!!