Expendables 2: Too Many Cooks Spoil The Soup The first time I heard everyone screaming about The Expendables, I was thrilled beyond description. I was anxious to meet most of my best actors all rolled into one team. Break-knock speed, I invaded video libraries and started the hunt for a copy of what many had already termed a “rarity”. Bandwagon effect on its highest, I actually enjoyed part 1. It was easy. It had Rambo, Dolph Lundgren, Jason Statham, Jet Li, and those names are enough to explain the “stardom disease” that unknowingly infects many film watchers. Out of sheer excitement and the Happy Consciousness (where other people determine for us what is exciting and what is not), I never noticed that Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger were redundant characters if not useless. I can assure you that I concentrated more on my favourite stars than the story they were representing. I can’t say it was a good or bad story. Yesterday, I watched The Expendables 2 and was not impressed at all! The film has a million issues and I don’t know whether Simon West (The Director) noticed them! 1) The story is weak. It is full of deus ex machina. When Sylvester Stallone aka Rambo’s team is trapped and overpowered in a village, Chuck Norris shows up from nowhere and rescues them. Second time, the team is stranded in a tunnel with miners and Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up and rescues them. Outside the tunnel, they are stranded again with no transport means and Bruce Willis enters with a plane. Eeh! 2) The story is overcrowded with many characters. I am saying this because I did not exactly see the American overinflated ego and self-delusion of course, where an over powerful commando (perhaps stronger than God if you wish) takes a mission and single-handedly topples a foreign government. The Expendables is a multi-coloured decoration which loses bearing because of over ornamenting. The more they aimed at over strengthening the protagonists, the more they weakened the story. 3) It is unbalanced and clashing. The protagonist (Rambo’s team) is too powerful because it has Rambo, Statham, Lundgren, Jet Li, Bruce Willis, Schwarzenegger, chuck Norris which makes the team invincible. No wonder the screenplay is by Sylvester Stallone! The antagonist (Jean-Claude Van Damme’s team) has only himself and Scott Adkins locally known as “Mangele”. Ironically, the antagonists overpower the protagonists in most instances. The protagonists only win in the end because they are supposed to win. Re-watch the clip where Rambo kills Van Damme and Statham kills Adkins. It’s more of the director’s win than a character’s. 4) Shockingly still, the film makes you sympathise with the antagonists! This is the side we are naturally expected to loathe/ hate but I found myself sympathising with Jean Claude Van Damme because I felt that his side was unfairly cheated. The director tried so much to make this side as ugly as possible but he failed to make me hate it or worse, side with his protagonists. 5) No focus, no goal, just a show-off. The movie begins with a rescue mission in Nepal and the victim is Schwarzenegger who claims had also gone to rescue some Chinese bosses. There is no background and no future to this mission or why in the first place the victims were captured or need to be rescued. Jet Li disappears here too, never to be seen again. Abruptly, the story shifts to Albania and Rambo’s team is trying to intercept Van Damme’s group from getting hold of plutonium. Even so, when they “defeat” Van Damme, we don’t see anyone retrieving this plutonium which apparently was taken by Van Damme’s men and hidden no-one-knows-where. What is this movie’s goal? Absurd as it may sound; I think the “stardom disease” is what sells some movies. If it was not because of the many super stars, believe me, I would never waste my time on The Expendables. Filmmakers must remember that they are not entertaining dense audiences. The old English saying is therefore true: too many cooks spoil the broth exactly like the many redundant characters messed up The Expendables! I Write It The Way It Is
Posted on: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 05:24:23 +0000