Movie review: The Expendables 2

Grade: D+

I really enjoyed the first *Expendables*. It wasn’t a great movie by any means but for an action movie fan it was fun. But it was fun in a serious way. There was good character development in the first *Expendables* and something the resembled a plot.

*Expendables 2*? Not so much. It’s campy from beginning to end. The story is non existent. Every scene was meant to set up another one liner or excuse for another fight. That would have been okay but I didn’t think the action was really all that impressive. Jason Statham had some good stuff. The rest was ho-hum.  At some point in an action movie you have to wonder if a character is going to make it or not. Otherwise it’s like watching a sporting event on your DVR when you already know the final score.

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All of the funny scenes revolved around the actors making reference to lines they had in previous movies. While that’s fun that’s all they had to work with.

My advice would be to wait for the DVD. The few good one liners might be worth rewinding for. And you might need to rewind many of  Stallone’s scenes because he’s hardly intelligible unless he’s talking slow and facing the camera.

And FYI, the back story they gave to Gunner – Dolph Lundgren – is actually the actors real back story. Every bit of it. He really did get a Masters in Chemical Engineering.