Marshall and the Movies

If you aren’t willing to forget all cinematic standards, “The Expendables” will be a dismally stupid exercise in corny filmmaking that is only good for mockery.  But if you are willing to watch an hour and 30 minutes of Sylvester Stallone and a bunch of other fading action stars trying to be cool, then you will have one rip-roaringly fun ride.

The stars you recognize are clearly far from their glory days in the 1980s, and Stallone has given them the opportunity to relive them while they wait for their AARP cards.  With a little help from Jason Statham and Jet Li, action stars of a younger generation, they manage to walk through every ridiculous motion that the trigger-happy movies of decades past so seriously that it becomes riotously funny.  (Except I feel like Stallone doesn’t know that he’s not actually cool, so someone needs to man up and tell him.)

“The Expendables” is actually one of the best worst movies I’ve ever seen, so enormously entertaining in all its shortcomings.  There’s everything to love about an action movie in excess, especially blood and gore.  The violence gets so absurd and comical that there’s no appropriate response but laughter to how unrealistic it gets.  But the humor doesn’t stop at the slaughtering of villainous drug traffickers; the script is equally as silly, providing Stallone and company with plenty of horrifying one-liners to utter and hackneyed plotlines to follow.

Hollywood gives us plenty of movies to enjoy if we simply lower our standards.  “The Expendables” is easy to enjoy if we simply have no standards.  C+ /