"Remember, Sully, when I promised to kill you last? I lied.""You're a disease. And I'm the cure."
"HO HO HO NOW I HAVE A MACHINE GUN"
"I ain't got time to bleed."
"Murdock. I'm comin' to get you."
"I'll be back."
Ah, the '80s action movie. Simple formula: one lone current or former cop/CIA agent/Special Forces soldier with an attitude and a shitload of guns that never seem to need reloading versus an army of criminals/terrorists/mobsters/alien hunters/Communists. Any guy who grew up in the '80s will tell you that movies like Commando, First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Die Hard, and Predator were our Chick Flicks. We'd watch John Rambo's stirring last speech - "I WANT... what they WANT... for our country to love US... as much as WE... love IT... THAT'S what I WANT!" - and weep the tears of a PMSing housewife watching Beaches.
And now, man-children of the '80s, at last we have our Steel Magnolias.
Stallone. Lundgren. Li. Statham. A couple of MMA Dudes. The Prez from Idiocracy. Mickey "Harley Davidson" Rourke! AND HOLY CINEMATIC EQUIVALENT OF A HADRON COLLIDER EXPERIMENT GONE APOCALYPTICALLY YET BEAUTIFULLY WRONG - BRUCE WILLIS AND THE GOVERNOR OF THE GREAT STATE OF CALIFORNIA ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER! I give you...The Expendables.
What's it about? Something about "the world's greatest mercenaries" (a bold statement, one which I'm sure Ace Hunter and the Megaforce would take issue with) and... uh... shit blowing up, dudes getting shot, and muscle-bound oafs cracking wise, that's what's it's about. There's the obligatory Hot Latina Woman (back in the day, she would've been played by Maria Conchita Alonso), the Government Weasel Who Sells Out The Team (I'm thinking that part woulda gone to '80s That Guy actor Charles Napier), and Eric Roberts (Eric Roberts). In this, the age of the Politically Correct War Movie, it's somewhat refreshing to see the good ol' fashioned Gun Porn of my youth back on the big screen. There's Bad Movies, and then there's Movies That Are So Bad They're Good, and now we have The Expendables, which looks like it'll be a Moebius Strip of Infinite Boundless Awesuck.
