The Expendables 3 - 2014

"The Expendables 3" - 2014
Dir. by Patrick Hughes - 2 hrs. 6 min.

Official Trailer #1

by Clayton Hollifield

It's time to blow some stuff up!  Why?  Sylvester Stallone says so!

Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and his crew of Expendables (which is down to five) break a prisoner out of a train-car prison.  This prisoner, Doc (Wesley Snipes), is a former (and soon to be current) member of the Expendables, and is not only a doctor, but trained with knives.  With the roster up to six, (Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Dolph Lundgren's characters round out the crew), they head off to another job, to capture some arms dealer in Somalia.  Things go sideways, someone gets hurt badly, and the target turns out not to be a nobody, but a somebody, somebody who was supposed to be dead.  This forces Barney to confront the fact that he's old as balls, and so is his crew, so he abruptly fires them, enlists Bonaparte (Kelsey Grammer) to help him round up some new talent, and then they attempt to do the job right.  Which, of course, is exactly how it goes.

I did enjoy "The Expendables 3," maybe more than the last installment.  I didn't have that feeling that something great was just out of grasp; instead, I just kicked back with my popcorn and enjoyed what there was to enjoy.  The action was fairly good; I don't know how much of that had to do with stunt actors or if the director just did a great job of misdirection.  The story itself was kind of predictable, but that in itself isn't always a problem.  I mean, I don't derive any less satisfaction from watching giant guns blow thing up just because I know it's coming.  Once a situation is set up, there's only so many ways that the story can go.  That's life.  I'm not sure if I'd even watched the trailer for this film ahead of time, so more than half of the fun is seeing who showed up this time around.  I had no idea Mel Gibson had a substantial role, nor Kelsey Grammer, nor Antonio Banderas, who really stole the movie with his scenes.

As for the negatives, a lot of people might point towards the shift from an R-rated franchise to a PG-13 one, and I have no idea why the decision to make that shift occurred.  It didn't really affect anything in the story, other than I'm sure that Stallone had to bellow "shit" instead of "fuck" when things went awry.  It seems disingenuous to make any kind of a war/mercenary film that's anything less than an R-rating; why is murder-for-hire an acceptable topic for a movie for teenagers?  Even if you avoid boobies and bad words and dude ass and excessive blood, I feel like the profession itself is unacceptable to present to kids.  If Joe Camel being a cartoon isn't acceptable, why can a thirteen year-old watch movies about arms dealers?  The whole thing just seems weird to me, as does the desire to sell this material to the underage set.  I feel like the notion that being a mercenary is an acceptable way to earn a living is far more damaging than a string of muttered obscenities.  But I'm an adult, and I don't have any children, so who cares?

The main difference here is a shift from dark comedy to lighter comedy.  Part of that is the inevitable "you're old/you're young" generational nonsense between the old crew and the new crew, and part of that is how awesome Antonio Banderas' was.  He's so much fun, it would have been a shame to cut any of his material.  But one of the main points of the film was Barney not wanting to cost people lives by misjudging when he was over the hill, which is a fairly serious point, and a real moral conundrum.  Barney broods over it, but light-hearted banter doesn't go well with that message.  And out of all of the new crew, I'd really only want to watch a couple of them again (Ronda Rousey and Kellan Lutz, for the record), should a fourth installment materialize.

It feels like this franchise has reached it's conclusion with "The Expendables 3."  I'm okay with that; I had to go back and read my review of the second installment to remember what I thought of it.  That (fairly) indicates that these films have been something pretty far from memorable.  Enjoyable, surely, and a surprisingly good idea, also, check.  It takes a certain amount of ingenuity to get good action films out of a cast that really has no business doing action films.  The last time around, I felt like there was a legitimately great film possible with this premise and these actors, and rather than pursuing that, the third installment goes down the road of navel-gazing and torch-passing.  That's a dramatic shift in tone from the second "Expendables," where it was so completely over-blown and cameo-riddled that the notion of looking forward instead of backward seemed impossible.  The idea that the old guard needs some new blood to move forward is pretty contrary to the idea of seeing all of your favorite old action stars in one film.  After "The Expendables 2," I was game to see a third.  After "The Expendables 3," there's a good chance that I would need to know who's in it, and be sold on the story a little bit to turn back up at the theatre for a fourth "Expendables."

2.5 / 5 - Theatre

Escape Plan - 2013

"Escape Plan" - 2013
Dir. by Mikael Hafstrom - 1 hr. 55 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollfield

First off, Sylvester Stallone has a really lumpy face.  That's actually an asset in films like this, but it stood out upon watching "Escape Plan," and I thought I'd get that out of the way.  Also of note, "Escape Plan" isn't going to go down in the top handful of films that either Stallone or co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger has done, but at the same time, it wasn't "Wild Hogs" or "Space Cowboys," with constant jokes about how old the stars are, and their assortments of balms and ointments.  Instead, this is a straight-up thriller, basically physically solving a seemingly unsolvable puzzle, and makes good use of the people involved, and if you're down with this sort of thing, you won't regret watching it.

Ray Breslin (Stallone) make a living escaping from prisons.  Like, super max security prisons, even from solitary confinement.  He owns a security consulting firm built around selling his particular skill-set to those who would need it, abetted by his "techno-thug," Hush (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson), resident female skeptic, Abigail (Amy Ryan), and business specialist, Lester Clark (Vincent D'Onofrio).  A woman comes in with a dodgy offer, claiming to be from the C.I.A., but with impossible and unfriendly circumstances, and yet with a sufficiently attractive fistful of dollars.  So a day later, Ray is abducted and thrown into a very daunting and harsh prison.  Upon landing in the prison, Emil (Schwarzenegger) slowly befriends Ray, and they work together to first figure out where the hell they are, and then to find a way out of where they are.

I joked ahead of time that I was going to be sorely disappointed if there weren't any explosions here, and that nearly happened.  "Escape Plan" relies a lot more heavily on tension, and personal physical violence (and a pressing system) than pyrotechnics.  And even though both Stallone and Schwarzenegger are clearly still in pretty good shape, it's not a shirtless kind of movie, nor a wall-to-wall action kind of movie.  This is about solving a puzzle when there seemingly aren't any clues to start with, and surviving the circumstances.  While I found the set-up interesting (at least interesting enough to catch the movie in the first place), I can't say that the film gives you a chance to solve things for yourself.  Honestly, the solutions are too complicated to do that, but when Ray breaks out of the first prison (to show you that he's really good at this, instead of just telling you that and hoping you'll take their word for it), I think viewers will find themselves more amazed that this character can make something out of nearly nothing than seeing the puzzle and having the character beat them to a solution.

The suspense of the bigger job that Ray is hired for is enough to carry the movie.  Although both stars bust off a couple of good one-liners along the way, this is also not the kind of free-wheeling, blowing up everything while caring not even a little bit kind of film.  I bring this up because a big part of why someone would want to go see "Escape Plan" is also the same reason that the two "Expendables" movies have done well - nostalgia.  And this film is not like a lost production from the 1980s.  To everyone's credit, they are not just trying to repackage an old product and pass it off as being fresh; they've made a movie where the main characters are older because they are, and they're not trying to pretend they're not.  "Escape Plan" also doesn't feel like the sort of movie that could have starred anyone.  If it were Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson here, you might question if either of them were really smart enough to be an escape artist, specializing in impossible situations (no insult to either, but neither man has made a career playing brilliant men to date).  The main annoyance I had was that the people who had weird quirks were immediately obviously bad guys (because they had quirks instead of death glares), but I can't get too mad about it.  This is not a stage production of "Hamlet."

On the whole, I was glad that I caught "Escape Plan," and especially on a big screen.  It's not going to blow anyone's mind, it's probably not going to be in line for any year-end awards.  But it's intended to be a couple of hours of entertainment, preferably for people who have enjoyed Stallone's and Schwarzenegger's work over the years, and who don't feel the need to nitpick things to death.  I mean, it's Rambo and the Terminator side-by-side, and that's pretty cool.  I can't imagine needing to watch it again, but there are always colds and viruses floating around, and oddball movies on cable all around the clock.

2 / 5 - Theatre

Judge Dredd - 1995

"Judge Dredd" - 1995
Dir. by Danny Cannon - 1 hr. 36 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

You can tell a lot from how Hollywood handles comic book movies by the difference between this 1995 version and last year's version of movies made based on the Judge Dredd character.  The basic difference is that filmmakers in 1995 didn't have a god-damned clue what to do with the source material.  The 2012 film is solid, made it's money back, and was vastly more entertaining than I expected.  If that movie had come out in 1995, it would have blown people's minds, in the way that "The Matrix" did when it came out.  Now, it's just expected that any (non-DC) comic book movie is going to be pretty decent, and not radically violate the rules surrounding the source material.  But in 1995...

The world has gone to Hell, and the entire Earth's population has settle in one Mega City that spans the entire Eastern Seaboard.  Since the dense population is difficult to control, the entire judicial system is condensed into one person: a judge that also carries out sentencing and the sentence itself.  Dredd (Sylvester Stallone) is the finest of the judges.  Naturally, that means that he's framed for a murder by the long-lost brother he never even knew he had, Rico Dredd (Armand Assante).  Once Judge Dredd is stripped of his position and sent to jail (alongside Herman, played by Rob Schneider!), he must fight his way back into the city to confront his brother and to blow things up.

If I wanted to comprehensively cover all of the ways this movie was terrible, I'd still be typing three days from now.  Instead, I'll focus on three main areas of problems: derivative-ness, inability to grasp the source material, and absurdity.  You can't exactly judge a film for looking like a film from it's era, but this is super-true for "Judge Dredd."  There's a kind of shininess that's a hallmark of sci-fi films from this time-frame; everything takes place in the dark, but everything's also kind of well-lit and sometimes features neon.  When it's done poorly (like here, or in the Joel Schumacher Batman films), it just looks like you stepped into an arcade in your cargo shorts and flannels, and there's no dirt on anything anywhere.  I suppose this look came from Paul Verhoeven, in movies like "Robocop," "Total Recall," or "Starship Troopers."  It works for his films, partly because there's a built-in cheesiness to what he does (I mean that as a compliment, I swear).  The look feels organic for Verhoeven, but only because it feels like the actors are on the same page as he is. Here, it feels like the actors are drawing on the 1960's Batman film - Stallone is a mix between Adam West (especially when he's got his helmet on) and Fonzie (two direct Fonzie rips - he says at one point that he's never apologized to anyone in his life, and at another point he bangs on a piece of technology with his fist to make it work, and it actually starts working!), Armand Assante is also on the Batman tip with a blend of Nicholson and Cesar Romero's versions of the Joker, and Rob Schneider is every annoying pocket-sized sidekick ever.

There's also the section of the film that feels like it's exactly the "Back to the Future" ride from Universal Studios theme park.  I don't know what else to say about that other than if you have been on that ride, the sky-motorcycle chase scene in the third act is going to feel super-familiar.

It took a lot of bad comic book movies for Hollywood to get even a loose grasp on making this genre of film work.  One of the things that many filmmakers didn't understand is that there are very specific reasons why each character works for it's fans.  Yes, Spider-Man is kinda emo sometimes, but he's also funny, and it's an underdog story.  This is why there should never be a movie where he leads the Avengers.  Batman is an ass-kicking machine with all the best toys, this is why romance plots involving Bruce Wayne are rarely the best Batman stories.  Judge Dredd is all-work, deadly serious (although the comics are darkly humorous, and not "dishing out crappy one-liners" humorous like Stallone seems to think), always gets the job done.  He's a juggernaut of justice.  He literally shoots criminals in the face when he catches them.  The source material is an ultra-violent statement on a fascist government agency.

In the comics, Judge Dredd literally (literally!) never removes his helmet.  At least not so the reader can see in his face.  So why would you have Stallone's Dredd take his helmet off in the first fifteen minutes of the film, and spend more time bare-faced than helmeted?  Or more to the point, why, when comic books were the furthest from cool they could be (and I say this as someone who was working on the very periphery of self-publishing at that time (as well as having worked in a comic-book store during that time period), and thus tasked with try to sell uncool products to people who could care less), would the very first thing you see on the screen when the movie starts is a collage of "Judge Dredd" comic book covers and panels?  Did these filmmakers believe the sort of people who either liked the comic or would go see a Stallone film would care that Gianni Versace designed the Dredd costume (absurdly, I might add)?  Were they not aware that the early-film shot that pans up Dredd's Versace threads from head to toe also leads to a full-screen close-up of Dredd's codpiece?  Or did they think that a Stallone/Dredd audience (and let's peg it exactly - a teenage/early 20's guy who wants to see things blow up and people get shot) might not be that interested in the only female character, Dredd's peer Judge Hershey (Diane Lane), haranguing Dredd for not sharing his feelings?

A film that starred a man in a codpiece grossed over $100 million in the mid-90s.  Think about that for a minute.  But at every turn, "Judge Dredd" is a film that seems to be a baffling collection of the vanity quirks of everyone involved, rather than an attempt to make a decent film.  There doesn't seem to be any grasp of the material that they're supposed to be interpreting; Dredd is supposed to be a symbol of government oppression, and this film becomes a man vs. system story before it turns into the brother vs. brother story.  The costumes look awful (too shiny, which is absurd in a profession where you can expect to be shot at frequently), and Dredd is literally the opposite of someone who seeks attention and adoration, but the costume seems to be an excuse for Stallone to stand around, helmet off, with his chest puffed out and his ass stuck out so you can see how much he's been working out.

But really, the key word for "Judge Dredd" is "absurd."  And not in a clever way, or an ironic way, but more like a WTF, what were they thinking kind of absurdity.  Everyone engaged here (aside from Diane Lane, when she wasn't scripted to whine about Dredd's feelings) seems to think that a comic book being the source material means that you have to act like a cartoony villain.  When you a have a standard-issue plot and overall look, there has to be something to ground the story.  No one seemed to be both willing to do that and was in a position for it to matter.  The result is condescension: the actors inability to commit to the material tells viewers that the material isn't worth taking seriously.  For a film that was in a genre on shaky legs at that point, comic book fans can smell that sort of attitude a mile off.  And unlike now, when you can see a comic book movie every couple of weeks at the multiplex, this was a blown opportunity.  A big-budget adaptation with a real movie star wasn't something that came along every day; it's more likely you'd get something like "Monkeybone," starring someone you'd heard of (Brendan Fraser) in a role almost tailor-made to guarantee that his fans wouldn't want anything to do with the film.

So not only does "Judge Dredd" suck nearly as badly as any film I've managed to watch in it's entirety, but it was a (at the time) rare opportunity for such an adaptation to succeed completely botched.  I laughed all the way through "Judge Dredd" in the way you would at "Plan 9 From Outer Space"; in complete bafflement at how so many people could work together and produce such an incompetent, awful result.  If you're going to watch this, get drunk first, or maybe smoke a whole bagful of crack instead.  It'll help things like this scene make some kind of sense:

.5 / 5 - TV

The Expendables 2 - 2012

"The Expendables 2" - 2012
Dir. by Simon West - 1 hr. 43 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I don't know how something can be both satisfying and frustrating at the same time, but "The Expendables 2" manages to achieve both.  I don't know how you juggle so many ingredients, while simultaneously having so many actors that probably can't carry this type of film at this point successfully, but I'd argue that this film just barely succeeds at that.

Plot?  Well, have you ever wanted to see like every action star ever in one film, teaming up against evil?  Of course you do.  This time, Barney Ross' (Sylvester Stallone) crew is lured into chasing down a macguffin, which is hijacked by Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and his crew, the Sangs.  When one of the Expendables proves to be exactly that, Barney has a new goal: "Track 'em, find 'em, kill 'em."  And stuff blows up.  That part is pretty important, too.

The only other film that I've seen (which admittedly isn't a comprehensive list) that deals with the idea of aging action stars is "Red," and that proved to be a hit as well.  And while that film was more clever, the entire point of "The Expendables" films is overkill.  There's nothing clever about dozens of heads exploding, about gathering possibly too many stars in one film, or about the execution of the ideas within.  What "The Expendables 2" does have is a level of self-awareness.  It's not for me to say whether it's too much or not, but for folks of a certain vintage, it's pretty awesome to have Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis stealing each other's famous lines back and forth.  And if you've ever heard a "Chuck Norris is so tough that..." joke, you'll appreciate his role here.

In terms of the action, it's not bad at all.  The opening sequence, where the Expendables free a prisoner from a Nepal prison via invasion, is really good.  And the end sequence, where the Expendables face off with the Sang in an airport, is also good.  One valid question going is how these guys look physically; are they still the same action stars you remember, and can they still move convincingly?  That part's a mixed bag.  Instead of harping on the negative and whatever cosmetic enhancements are on display, I'll just offer up that Jet Li's fight sequence is excellent, and that Jean-Claude Van Damme still has the athleticism and swagger that made him a star.  I kind of feel like Van Damme might get more roles on the basis of his performance here; he's really believable as a dickish villain (I swear that's a compliment), and he could probably get more mileage from that ability in a less-crowded film.

So where's the disappointment come from?  I feel like the "Expendables" movies have all the tools at their disposal to make a really great film.  Not a decent one, not a pretty good one, but a straight-up great action film.  This film certainly delivers everything you'd expect going in: the explosions, the gun fights, the muscles, the tough-guy banter.  And it doesn't rest on nostalgia as the draw - the filmmakers certainly tip their hat when appropriate, but this isn't a sentimental victory lap for a generation of action stars.  Twice now, we've gotten good-ish films (you'll appreciate them more if you grew up on this sort of thing).  I want more out of this franchise.  Maybe that's not fair, and I should just accept that this is the sort of thing I'm going to get out these actors at this point in their careers.  It feels like something more is tantalizingly just out of reach.  If there's a third installment, I'll be there.  I hope that that film would be the one to finally knock it out of the park.

3 / 5 - Theatre

Death Race 2000 - 1975

"Death Race 2000" - 1975
Dir. by Paul Bartel - 1 hr. 20 min.

Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

First things first - "Death Race 2000" is not a good movie.  Rather, it's one of those films whose level of entertainment is inverse to it's legit cinema quality.  Do not be fooled by the rating I give this film at the end of the article, if you have a soft spot for cheesy, low-budget 1970s sci-fi movies, this is going to be a treat.  But if that sort of pleasure isn't written into your DNA, you should stay far, far away.

The story is built around the Transcontinental Road Race, a cross-country car race (the cars kind of look like the really weird Hot Wheels that you'd see in the toy section) where the racers gain points for mowing down people.  Frankenstein (David Carradine) is the star racer, much to rival racer Machine Gun Joe Viterbo's (Sylvester Stallone) chagrin.  This race is the biggest event in the country of the United Provinces (the government and economy of the good ol' U.S.A. has fallen apart, leading to this version of the year 2000).  There is a group of rebels, led by Thomasina Paine (Harriet Medin), who is suppposed to be a literal descendent of Thomas Paine.  The rebels intend to stop Frankenstein, replace him with a double, who will kill the President after winning the race.

The special effects and animation on this film are absolutely cut-rate.  Witness the cheesy semi-animated opening, the matte work at the race track, or the illustrations at the conclusion of the film.  As I mentioned before, the awfulness of these things just increase how appealing they are.  One thing they don't skimp on is explosions; when each racer in turn dies, they do so in a spectacular explosion.  Visually speaking, the rest of the film is rounded out by cool custom cars driving really fast, punctuated with pit stops full of full-on nudity, and by awesome 1970s fashions and hair.

David Carradine is kind of wooden in the lead, but it suits the character. He wears a gimp mask for a lot of the film, one that has a built-in prosthesis that makes him look like the name of his character.  This also has a very early Sylvester Stallone role (pre-"Rocky"), and he's pretty fun, even if his character is not much more than a caricature.  But then again, everyone in this movie is a caricature, from the racers to the sports announcers, to the fans.  That's the whole point.  The plot only works if everyone enthusiastically embraces the ultra-violent race as the best entertainment that this society has to offer.  Anything less than the best would be a felony.

The whole movie is unabashedly cheesy, which makes it easy to get in the spirit of things.  The cars are kind of cool (and I did like that each team was themed), and Myra's (Louisa Maritz) white fur-covered helmet might be the most awesome piece of safety equipment in the history of safety equipment.  When you dip into Roger Corman-land, you know exactly what's coming.  And "Death Race 2000" is so perfectly that, I can't really hold it's flaws against it.  It's not a good movie at all, but it's fun, mindless, and short.  That's not the worst thing I could say about a movie.

2 / 5 - Streaming