The Expendables

On Thursday The Expendables came out in cinemas and I was pretty freakin' excited. This is an action film with Sylvester Stallone, Jason Stratham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews and Mickey Rourke in it, and cameos from Bruce Willis and Arnold Swartznegger. How could any self-respecting action fan not be excited?

So I saw it on Thursday night and it was pretty awesome. It's like they got all the greatness of 80s action movies, all the over the top violence, all the explosions, all the big men punching each other, all the evil Military Generals, all the over sized guns, and mixed it all together and pretended Jason Bourne never turned action into a small man's, small gunned, smart hero's game. While James Bond responded to Bourne by imitating him, Stallone has respond by telling Jason Bourne to go...um... I can't finish that sentence on my blog.

The story is about a group of mercenaries who go and blow up a small, Latin American country that is being ruled by an evil military dictator, who is in turn the puppet of a corrupt-CIA guy. That's pretty much all there is to the plot. It's not exactly heavy on story.

The film really is just an 80s action dream come true. There a plenty of dumb, smart-ass lines whenever someone does something cool. There is a beautiful woman whose only job is to be rescued, there are hundreds of henchmen whose only job it to get blown up by an exploding shot gun. And to have some of the greatest (and not so greatest) action heroes of all time doing it, it's brilliant.

The film isn't perfect. I would have loved to have seen Willis and Swartznegger doing some actual fighting but I guess they were busy. I think Wesley Snipes and Kurt Russell would have made awesome additions to the team. I didn't really think anybody did any good acting in the entire film, but then, you don't watch films like this for their action. I mean, Randy Couture is from the UFC, he's famous for beating people up, not for acting.

I know action movies will never be like they were in the 80s, and I'm not sad about that. But this film, this to me is their last hurrah, this is the 80s action flick going out with a bang. There will be no more Rockys, Rambos, Predators, Commandos, Terminators or Die Hards. Actually there will be, but they won't be like they were in the 80s. The 80s were a special time for action movies, but the world has moved on. Hong Kong, John Woo, Jason Bourne, The Matrix, Christopher Nolan, Kung-Fu and Brian Singer have come to town, and they're all awesome. The Expendables is a fine and fitting farewell to a genre that will probably never be back. At least until the sequel comes out.

But for now, I feel like I need to watch Die Hard as soon as possible, because that is probably the greatest action movie of all time.