The Expendables 2

CIA operative Church (Bruce Willis) coerces Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and his team of mercenaries into retrieving a mysterious item from a downed airplane. Ross begrudgingly takes computer expert Maggie (Yu Nan) along for the ride. Though the item is recovered successfully, the team is ambushed by terrorist Jean Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who plans to use it to build and sell nuclear weapons. Now it is up to the Expendables to stop Villain and avenge the loss of one of their own.

The first Expendables, released two years ago, was a dream project of sorts for its stars. It brought together 80s action icons Stallone, Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (albeit in cameos only, for the latter two) with their 90s counterparts Jet Li, Jason Statham, and Steve Austin. Though saddled with a contrived plot and subpar acting, a referential script made it an entertaining homage. For the sequel, everything is cranked up to eleven. The Expendables 2 is both simultaneously a big, dumb, loud action movie and a definitive postmodern treatise on big, dumb, loud action movies everywhere.

To start, the sequel makes several improvements in the talent department. Simon West replaces Stallone in the director’s chair, and Austin, Eric Roberts, and Mickey Rourke (the only true loss here) are gone. In their place are Van Damme, more screen time for Willis and Schwarzenegger, and Chuck Norris. Van Damme’s cold, menacing Vilain is a clear upgrade over Roberts’ hammy antagonist, and though the climactic JVD-Sly fight is marred by overly obvious editing techniques, it still hits a satisfying note. Willis and Schwarzenegger seem to be having fun here. They mock each other’s trademark lines (“I’ll be back/Yipee kay yay.”) and, as per the trailer, go on a destructive rampage in what appears to be a Smart Car. Norris’ screentime is brief, but as is befitting a man of his inflated stature, he racks up an impressively high body count, performs several improbable feats, and nearly steals the damn show.

The real extent to which this is art and not just entertaining trash, however, is the deliberate blurring between film and reality. Early on in the film, Stallone and Statham are shown up by the team’s latest recruit, ex-Army sniper Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth), a younger, fitter man who leaves them pondering their own vitality. So to it must be for the 40 to 60-somethings in the film’s cast: how much longer can they be credible ass-kickers before their age becomes staggeringly apparent? At other times, the interplay between fact and fiction is done for laughs. Dolph Lundgren’s chemical engineering background is grafted onto his psychotic character Gunnar, and Norris’ character is nicknamed “The Lone Wolf” (as in McQuade). The filmmakers went all out to show action fans everywhere that this film was not just for them; it was born of the mythology they hold dear.

And yet, a few factors stop this from being truly “good.” Just as in the first film, the plot is patently ridiculous, perhaps even more so this time around. The acting, even in Rourke’s absence, has a few flourishes (i.e. Billy’s Afghanistan story), but remains uneven at best, and some of Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s one-liners are painfully bad. The ending sets up nicely for another sequel, but it also lends a sense of pointlessness to the proceedings.

Whether you are a casual action fan or a diehard devotee of the genre, The Expendables 2 offers a treasure trove of explosions, gunfire, hand-to-hand combat, decapitations, and other assorted violence. But it also offers a sly (pun not intended) look at how action stars approach their legacy and their place in a changing world. That takes some of the guilt out of what would otherwise be a guilty pleasure.

7.5/10