I've pretty much been waiting for this movie to come out for two years. I read an interview with Sylvester Stallone around the time I saw Rambo. He said it was time to bring 80's action back. America is suffering from an extreme lack of ultra musclebound, ultra violent, ultra accented action heroes. Plot be damned, we need loud explosions and gratuitous violence, and maybe boobs. The only problem is Hollywood is suffering from the same problem as the music industry: too many pussies. I'm sorry, Michael Cera and Jonah Hill are not going to cut it with gatling guns and throat ripping. Stallone went old school. He brought in Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, Randy Coutere, and Jason Statham to fight against Eric Roberts, Stone Cold Steve Austin and some dude who use to make a butt load of straight-to-HBO martial arts movies named Gary. Most important of all (in my eyes anyway), Stallone brought in Dolph F'ing Lundgren. Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. The dude is over 50 and his jaw is like a solid trapezoid. And he still has a lot of blonde hair. The movie just reaffirmed my aversion to Swedish people but in like a really badass way.
So, long story longer, Richard texted me on a Friday with two words: Expendables tonight? HELL YES. I immediately started making plans. I would drink a crap load of diet cokes to be ripped and wired. Then, after work, I would head straight to the gym to lift a crap load of weights so I'd be properly pumped to drive to the theater. We would then go to Cinebarre, one of those theaters that serves you dinner. There, I would dine on a crap load of steak and beer while I watched the manliest of man movies. I felt it was my duty as a man.
However, after consuming all the diet cokes, I suffered from caffeine withdrawal so I crashed. I no longer felt like lifting weights so I called Richard and told him I was coming over to discuss strategy for getting to the theater. Richard wussed out on dinner and decided to eat a Lean Cuisine. I punched him in the jaw. We skipped Cinebarre and went to the normal theater instead. That's cool because I could at least just get some popcorn. We settled in to get ready for the ride. This was the culmination of two years of dorking out. Let me see if I can summarize my thoughts on the actual movie.
Dude this movie is like one giant Andrew WK song. We open with hostages and the expendables show up. What happens? Dolph Lundgren shoots a dude in half with a shotgun and then people throw knives and shit. Sweet. Then back home, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger show up and have a conversation with Stallone. It's completely pointless but so incredibly cool because these three dudes among dudes are all on screen together. Wood. Stallone and Statham go visit the bad guys. The bad guys hang out in what can only be described as a lair. A FUCKING LAIR. Straight up videogame style lair. Statham and Stallone decide to shoot a bunch of bad guys with a cargo plane. They then decided that riddling the bad guys with bullets isn't enough. Stallone circles the plane back around and dumps gasoline on them and then Statham pops up out of the nose of the plane and shoots a flare gun at the gas covered bad guys. Why? Because this is an action movie mother fucker and he could get away with it. So not only are the bad guys flailing with unrealistic yet awesome gunshot wounds, they're now on fire. But not just any sort of fire. This gas was obviously explosive because they don't just flame, hell no these dudes explode. CARNAGE.
Statham and Stallone go home and hang out with Mickey Rourke. He smokes a pipe like Gandalf and tattoos people. He says some philosophical stuff to Stallone because the girls watching the movie need a deep part. While all this occurs, Statham finds out this girl he's been seeing got beat up by this other dude she was seeing. Bad move sir. Statham takes his Ducati to the playground where this dude is playing pickup basketball with his boys. Statham doesn't care. He delivered one of the most badass ass whippings I've ever seen on film. And it was on a playground. Dude took out like six other dudes. Nothing was sacred. He punched nuts and grabbed hair. Why? Because this is combat and not little league. And because he's one of the expendables.
After that, the whole crew gets together to go back to the LAIR. Why? We're still not really sure but mainly because man rules dictate that when there are bad guys and a lair, you take it out. So the team goes except for Dolph. He went rogue and fought Jet Li so Stallone is all like hell no dude and shot him in the chest. So the team minus Dolph heads back down to take out the bad guys. Seriously the final fight was awesome. The expendables show up and start fighting people and starting fires. Stone Cold Steve Austin and Stallone had a sweet fight that involved lots of flipping and head butting. Jet Li and Statham fought the straight-to-HBO guy named Gary. But then the bad guys got the upper hand.
That is until Terry Crews shows up with Dolph's shotgun. This is no ordinary shotgun though as we come to find out. It is fully automatic with exploding rounds. This is the most perfect weapon of ALL TIME for shooting people in half. And then when people are shot in half, you can turn it on guard towers because that fully automatic shotgun will blow those things up too. The sound that shotgun made was sweet and I still hear it in my dreams. So what do they do next? Remember, there is a lair involved here. They had to blow that mother fucker up. I forgot to mention that they spent about ten minutes of the final fight placing charges. What kind of charges were these? I don't know but they probably came from the 80's. When they went off, the lair crumbled in on itself like lairs were made to do.
Cut back to Mickey Rourke's tattoo parlor. The guys are telling stories and playing darts. Except these dudes play darts with knives because thats what dudes that ripped do. And Dolph Lundgren was back. See, he's such a badass that even when he's shot in the chest, he survives. I can't explain it and I probably don't want to know because it might be too much for me to handle. Then Statham walks out the front door into the street and takes a knife and throws it at the camera. So help me if this movie would have been 3-D, I might have kissed Richard on the mouth right then and there. PERFECT ENDING.
As the credits rolled, there was absolute silence as we filed out of the theater. Every one of us was still in awe. Richard gave me a hug and I understood. We bonded for two hours of awesomness. I was so incredibly sore the next day because I was involuntarily flexing for the entire movie. That's what happens when that much testosterone is on one screen. It's probably a good thing I didn't go lift weights beforehand because my shirt would have ripped right off during the movie because I was so incredibly pumped. I don't know if that experience will ever be repeated. All I know is Richard and I have this almost telepathic relationship with each other now. When we see each other we automatically start flexing and posing and then immediately start laughing. Just like they did in the 80's. Hell Yes.
