The Expendables 2: A Sequel That Misses the Mark
The action continues with our seasoned veterans. Barney Ross (Stallone) and his crew receive a new mission from Mr. Church (Willis): locate and secure a map leading to a mine containing tons of plutonium. However, a flamboyant European villain in sunglasses (Van Damme) is also after the map.
They’re back together, this time with an expanded roster. They once again mow down hordes of armed bad guys, throwing in some locker-room banter between explosions. Despite the talk about toning down the violence for a wider audience, there are still plenty of severed heads and dismembered limbs on display. It seems like it should be a blast, but something just doesn’t click.
Stallone and company increasingly resemble a theater troupe taking one too many curtain calls after a successful performance. The audience is getting restless and wants to go home, but they politely give a standing ovation to avoid hurting the actors’ feelings. It seems our aging heroes have misunderstood what exactly earned them the applause in the first place.
The Magic of the First Film
The first film’s appeal lay in the almost religious anticipation of a miracle. Seeing all these legendary action stars in one frame felt unbelievable until you witnessed it yourself. We saw it, we believed it, and we laughed heartily. But as experience shows, only Woody Allen’s jokes get funnier with repetition.
Where the Sequel Falters
Van Damme delivers a flying kick, Schwarzenegger repeatedly promises to return, and Stallone, barely able to run, evades fire from fifty gunmen and a tank. “The Expendables” was a touching, clumsy, but respectable final stand for a collective Rocky Balboa against the modern world. A farewell performance only works once, and trying to repeat it inevitably leads to parody.
It’s understandable that after the first film’s success, the veterans regained some long-lost confidence (okay, Stallone, but Van Damme and Lundgren hadn’t been relevant for a decade). However, even when aiming for a modern action film, they shouldn’t have diluted the gratuitous shooting with drama that’s detrimental to the genre. There’s love, revenge, youthful tragedy, and concern for the people of Eastern Europe, who are inexplicably dressed in rags and drinking cheap beer. The tattooed musclemen constantly talk, suffer, long for home, and curse their fate. It’s as if they’ve forgotten that even at their peak, our heroes often lost verbal battles to inanimate objects (remember Conan arguing with a camel?).
In this environment, the only sane old-timer is Chuck Norris, who has long embraced his status as a living internet meme. He’s called Walker here (some used to call him Lone Wolf), and he’s only on screen for about five minutes. But in that time, Chuck comically shoots down an entire army, visibly enjoys telling Sly a well-known joke about himself, and then starts pushing himself into scenes that aren’t his, taking his cameo to the point of absurdity. It turns out that even among tough mercenaries, there’s no democracy, just a true “Chucktatorship.”