Movie Review: The Expendables 2

By Catherina Gioino, The Young Folks

One-liners. .. Chuck Norris. Boom, done, you got the idea.

The movie started with the Expendables in a predicament, being followed and attacked by Nepali kidnappers after saving a Chinese business man and Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger). We get some funny one-liners in between, meet Liam Hemsworth, and get to see Bruce Willis boss Sylvester Stallone around. Church (Willis) gives Ross (Stallone) a seemingly easy mission and a safe cracker named Maggie (played by Nan Yu). The team is surprised she’s a woman (hence why she’s named Maggie) and they decide to follow through with the mission.

Trying not to give it away, someone from the Expendables dies, and we meet Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme). Vilain flies away with the contents of the safe, and it’s up to the Expendables to find him. They travel to Russia, find themselves in a simulated New York (think of Indiana Jones 4, where he’s in Area 51 but it’s meant to look like a regular town) and they again are attacked. The audience cheers in applause as Chuck Norris strolls (no, literally, strolling along shooting people with one hand) in, to the theme of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Anyway, I have to say the movie was better than the first one. For me, I thought the first one tried too desperately to get a few laughs and there barely was an essence of a villain. In this one, the innuendoes made it memorable. It’s funnier when you think about it, since Willis, Stallone and Schwarzenegger are actually friends and co-owners of Planet Hollywood, so they’re actually having conversations about real life in the movie. It was very hilarious when Chuck Norris (the sole reason I was dragged into seeing this) even said a Chuck Norris joke with a straight and serious face- I was once bit by a King Cobra snake, and after 5 dies of agonizing pain, it died. It was even better when they make fun of their past movies- you have a few Die Hard references for Willis, a Rambo and Rocky reference for Stallone, numerous Terminator references and numerous mixed martial arts references for most of the cast (since they mostly are experts in martial arts, and even a football reference for Terry Crews).and we meet Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme). Vilain flies away with the contents of the safe, and it’s up to the Expendables to find him. They travel to Russia, find themselves in a simulated New York (think of Indiana Jones 4, where he’s in Area 51 but it’s meant to look like a regular town) and they again are attacked. The audience cheers in applause as Chuck Norris strolls (no, literally, strolling along shooting people with one hand) in, to the theme of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

But there still were a few problems with the film. For one, sometimes you couldn’t clearly hear what the cast was saying (Think about Bane for The Dark Knight Rises, you could understand the topic what he was saying, but not exactly), due to the massive screaming and gun shots in the background. Also, there were barely any conversations in the movie, just a bunch of one-liners. (But noted, they were right for the movie.

Well, the movie gets a ★★★★★★★ 7/10 since it was pretty entertaining, but it still was a movie that passed the time between fights and jokes.

Here’s the trailer, and since there’s going to be a third film, who do you think will be great to star in the film? My picks? Clint Eastwood, Mr. T, Steven Seagal, and Harrison Ford. Come on- they’re all the right age.

This article was first published in The Young Folks.

Catherina is a 15 year old kid in New York City that pretty much knows everything about any movie. She writes screenplays in her free time, is a huge Kevin Spacey, Tina Fey, and Quentin Tarantino fan. She is known to randomly connect a moment with a movie. She writes for her school paper and is also part of her school soccer team, softball team, track team, math league, Italian culture club, drama club student council executive board and head altar server. You can contact her at catherina@theyoungfolks.com