The Expendables: A Review

Jason Statham at some point is cheated on by his girlfriend, the lovely Charisma Carpenter. That is pretty much all the plot I could extract from the 103 minute explosion that is The Expendables. But if you are looking for any negative criticism of Sylvester Stallone's valiant tour de brute force, please look elsewhere (read: everywhere.) The film is currently unmatched in it's machismo and masculine vigor, and while Stallone aims to remind us of a time when these traits were lauded, the film is firmly entrenched in the right now.
These men are mercenaries: well trained, heavily armed, elite soldiers of fortune delivering pocket-sized wars to the doorsteps of anyone with the appropriate funds. In the film, the appropriate funds come from Bruce Willis as Mr. Church, fervently cementing the inherent homage to the Die Hard-like sentiment. But more importantly, in the theater the role of the benefactor of explosions is played by us. (I provided a hefty, very modern-day $13 out of the 38 million box office yield(*) simply for something to explode - and oh, DID they explode.) Thus, The Expendables is more than just Stallone, Lundgren, Willis, and Schwarzenegger making a comeback. We the viewer are coming back. And the film does exceptionally well welcoming us back with wide-open, tatted-up, ripped arms.
So now we're all back. But even at the very onset, the film's premise goes even further and asserts that... we've never even left! Mercenaries for hire are all the rage in The Expendables universe; have always been. There's no need for a back story or a weak formation of the team montage like the recent A-Team movie or Inception. You already know who's down. They're sublimely familiar. The roster reads more like your cell phone's contact list then an IMDB page.
The film begins with our friends in a standoff with Somali pirates holding a hostage. The politics of the film are overtly simplistic and tropes and cliches outline the antagonists, sometimes with culturally insensitive hues. Great! In this way, The Expendables poignantly emulates the denial of nuance and subtlety that exists deep within Americana, our media and our arts, whether we admit it or not. It's the post-everything hyper-liberalization of culture that has left an empty, sinking feeling in our stomachs. The Expendables nobly aims to fill that with an explosion or two.
So from Somalia we travel to South America because Bruce Willis said so. Once again very simple politics and developmental dialogue background immaculately choreographed fighting and explosions. There's some banter, some laughs, knives get thrown, red-shirts get shot, someone gets a new tattoo at some point, an airplane shootout, a car chase, a boxing match with Mr. T, Hulk Hogan wins the belt back from the Rock, a double cross, man hugs, some short jokes, an Old Spice guy (no not that one), maybe some objectification of women, and basically everything else that could be manly was allowed to roam free across the celluloid, untethered from logistics or politically correctness (admittedly, I chuckled when I put together that Jet Li's character's name was in fact Ying Yang.)
So untethered of a film, I felt no obligation to place the customary spoiler warnings anywhere in this post. Honestly, you can't spoil something so sweeeeeet. Also, as mentioned before, the plot is somewhat hazy to me and will probably be to you as well, so shrug. And not hazy in that "Shit! Inception blew my mind, bro! Do you think it kept spinning?" sort of way. More like, a 104th minute would have permanently ruined your ability to suspend your disbelief ever again, in turn killing the art of film for you forever, and perhaps actually killing you. Ignore that. Eventually the beautiful Charisma Carpenter saunters back into Jason Statham's life. So don't worry. Be a man, go watch the movie. I'd go again if I could find a theater that seats 20 thousand and got as drunk as I did the first time.

The Beef in Hollywood

Supposedly, when movies suck we, the consumers, know it. We tell our friends. We tweet it. We even go on web-hosted tirades and bash the actors, directors or racial makeup of the flick (sigh, The Last Airbender.) Bad movies cost us precious time, money and brain cells, so it follows then that we have the right to wage war on their existence (post-production) even if that means elevating the film to an undeserved prominence in the meanwhile.

But what happens when an actor or any other willing participant in some multi-million dollar venture in Hollywood degradation joins us in our fervent critiquing? They must consider themselves valiant in someway by pointing out the obvious, that The Last Crusade should have very well been the last crusade. But what the Shia The Beefs of Tinseltown seem to forget, is that it’s their fault - completely, unadulteratedly their fault.

Recently, comedic legend Bill Murray attempted to explain away the live-action Garfield films to GQ magazine. Basically the bulk of his justification rests on Joel Cohen, writer of such gems as 2003’s Cheaper by the Dozen with Steve Martin (I’ll call you a liar if you saw this film and didn’t smile once), not being one of the Coen brothers, who may or may not have won some Oscars and the like and may or may not have a crush on George Clooney. Chances are the interview is simply another example of Murray’s wry humor acrobatics at the expense of a CGI lasagna-loving feline. (There was a sequel, after all.)

Bill won’t be penalized for the remarks in any way. He’s a Ghostbuster after all. Shia will probably get a slap on the wrist and have to wait a little longer for a dog at the yearly Spielberg barbecue. Megan Fox trash talked the Transformers franchise and director and won’t be in the most recent installment, but she’ll bounce back - probably in a wet baby-t of some sort. Some media outlets have even lauded these actors as honest whistle blowers within the vacuous machine of Hollywood big-budget, low-quality film making.

Well, those media outlets may just be misled cogs in that same machine. Actors get paid to act. (The logic is sound, believe me I checked.) Sometimes they get praise and awards for other things - speaking out on the war, showing up at benefit galas, wearing political t-shirts and so on. But in reality, even in these instances they are doing what they get paid for: acting. They are acting like us who care about various causes and actually have things at stake, but are unable to be heard or heeded or showcased because People magazine has limited space on the cover and Katie Holmes-Cruise is kinda tall.

When these actors start acting like consumers that hate something they had previously acted in, in many ways, it forms some sort of space-time paradox that only the Old Spice Guy can adequately explain. But I’ll try: You did it though! You read the lines. You cashed the check. You took the fame. You did it. Now, it’s no good?

Its simple. Movies are movies. Some are good (to some). Some are bad (to others). Ren Stevens’ little brother happens to act in a bunch of them - even more on the horizon. People may very well watch movies because he’s in them, but he’s in them definitely because people watch movies. People pay to watch movies. They consume these movies, digest them and do what they will with these movies, whether that is develop a cult following of mediocrity or publicly chastise its creation. Actors act in them. The problem arises when actors act like consumers that consume, cannibalising themselves, threatening the Hollywierd machine we truthfully love and love to hate. Well not actually threatening the machine, it is Hollywood. They had us wearing funny glasses with red and blue plastic lenses. Ha! And they’re having us do it again, only worse. But maybe its taking some tiny, minuscule hits.

So please Shia, stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself.