Yesterday I went to see a film.
It was called The Expendables.
It starred Sly, the Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Stone Cold, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, explosions and 9.4 million bullets.
It was absolutely fucking awesome.
I had high hopes going in, wanting a big, stupid action film, in the vein of Commando, Universal Soldier, Die Hard, or Rambo, yet being fully aware that Hollywood shuns these popcorn action flicks in favour of slick CGI effects, and expecting disappointment.
It blew my damn mind apart.
The storyline in an alliterative sentence;
Murderous mercenaries massacre multiple enemies, on a mission to save... some woman.
The characters are simple. Sly is a pistol expert, Stath is a knife expert, Li is a kung fu expert, Crews is a rifle expert, Couture is a brawl expert, Lundgren is an all round expert, and Mickey Rourke provides info, motivation, and is unbelievably, distractingly ugly.
There are some spectacular scenes in there, including the Statham and Sly destroying an entire pier with some oil, a fight between Sly and Stone Cold, featuring the most ridiculous running tackle seen since '87, and the destruction of a "choppaaaaah" by Terry Crews and Sly (who appears to be able to slaughter everything in a mile radius with his pistols.
However, the standout character in this film is Terry Crews' nuclear warhead firing assault rifle thing. I was in hysterics when it was unleashed, and every time after. If, when the camera pans to the "up corridor view", you don't laugh, you are broken inside. Its that simple.
The final 30 minutes of this film have roughly 50 seconds of dialogue. Unless you include the screams.
There were a couple of problems. A truly awful cgi blood effect and an even worse fire effect. This was bizarre, considering that the 900 or so kills involving fire and blood, other than these two incidents, were stupendous. Just two silly mistakes. In a film this good, I can take that.
Its so damn good, its knocked Commando, a film I wanted it to EMULATE, out of my top 5 films of all time.
I've heard a lot about Inception, and yes, I do want to see it, but when I saw this, the first thing that popped into my head was imagining Sly saying;
"Gruuhh hngghhh hrruuuugh ggggrruuugh ffggiiinnguuuurgh"
Translated to;
"Fuck Inception. This movie is the dog's bollocks."
And you know what, he's right.
It was fucking awesome.
