The Expendables 2

            Sometimes you know exactly what to expect when you walk into a movie theater.  It's rare, but once in awhile you get what you want out of a movie.  Nothing more, nothing less.  This weekend's big release is such a film.

On to the review!

            Of course, like every other American male between the ages of 25-50, I spent lots of time watching 80's action flicks.  So when Sylvester Stallone got a few of his fellow cheesy action flick buddies together and made a movie about them running around and blowing shit up, I was there.  Now, 2 years later, his merry band of violent pranksters are back and they've got a few more action buddies in tow.  Welcome to The Expendables 2!

            This time Jason Statham's character Christmas isn't the youngest.  That honor goes to Liam Hemsworth, whose vague similarity to his slightly-better-known-brother Chris is just unnerving enough to make you wonder if it isn't just the same guy using age-regression software.  Along with Liam, the other good-guy newcomers are Chuck Norris as The Lone Wolf (yes, he even gets a Chuck Norris joke into the movie), Nan Yu as a specialist attached to Stallone's team.  Ostensibly she's a love interest, but it almost feels like they've included her just to reduce the number of homoerotic jokes you could make throughout the film.

            Unfortunately, we're far too light on the bad guy side of the film.  All we get Jean-Claude Van Damme as the big bad heavy, Vilain (haha, see how similar it is to Villain?  Clever writing, guys!) and his psychopathic sidekick, Hector, played by Scott Adkins.  A quick visit to his IMDB page shows that roughly 80% of his movie roles have been 'henchman' or 'fighter.'  I'm not saying it to mean that Van Damme is nothing special, it's just that I would love to see 3 or 4 badasses on the other side of the line.  That's just the greedy kid in me.

            Now here's where I reassure you that everyone you knew and loved in the first film is back.  Statham, Li, Stallone, Lundgren, Willis, Schwarzenegger, Crews and Couture are all present and accounted for.  Well, to varying degrees.  At this point, there are so many people and puns that Stallone wants to cram into the movie that some guys suffer from an even bigger dearth of screen time than they did in the first film.

            Plot-wise, it's even flimsier than the original Expendables film.  Van Damme wants to sell plutonium to terrorists, and Stallone and the others must stop him.  Ok, yeah, it's more convoluted than that, but I wouldn't want to spoil any surprises.

            The violence is to the original what Rambo 4 was to Rocky 1.  What I mean by that is: holy shit there's blood everywhere.  If you get so much as teabagged in the Expendables 2 universe, you are going to spew a mist of blood from your mouth and nose.  If you look closely during the opening scene, you can see daylight through the torso of more than one enemy shot by a .50 Cal, and it gets more ridiculous from there.

            I really don't have anything else to add.  By all means, go see this film if you want to shut your brain off.  I'll allow it this time, because it's just so damn cheesy, and unlike most Sandler flicks, there isn't any lowest-common-denominator humor involved.  Just a bunch of big guys with big guns.  (Sex joke?)