Phrederic
Since: Jun, 2009
08/13/2010 00:00:00
Would you have enjoyed it a lot less if you weren't an eighties action movie fan, or is this just pure nostalgia?
"Whoa" Keanu Reeves
JackMackerel
Since: Jul, 2010
08/21/2010 00:00:00
I haven't watched a lot of eighties action flicks and you'd probably enjoy it the same.
Yeah, this definitely could have been a lot better and more action-y. Sly did promise a sequel if it did well at the box office, so here's to hoping.
Half-Life: Dual Nature, a crossover story of reasonably sized proportions.Leave a Comment:
Exactly what it promised to be
Rule Of Cool personified. The execution, however, does leave a bit to be desired.
My biggest complaint is about the first act, which starts out and moves very, very slow. We get a Michael Bay-style introduction to our heroes where they kill a bunch of baddies, then it moves on to a lot of talking and exposition. Nobody gives a shit. Start killing more, please. The mercs then take a new job - the Banana Republic - and Stallone meets Bruce Willis to make the deal. Arnold makes an appearance, hands down an awesome One Scene Wonder with some very witty lines.
Stallone and Statham (Yeah, I know the characters have names, but nobody gives a shit about that, either) enter the island nation to do a recon. They meet the Damsel In Distress and are discovered by the country's army, and so we get some action, Stuff Blowing Up and some great HSQ as the guys make a getaway. The girl stays behind as a Plot Device to make them come back. More exposition. Willis is a CIA guy, there is a Man Behind The Man, blahblahblah. Stallone decides to go back and rescue the girl because No One Gets Left Behind. (Also, the two of them are getting Strangled By The Red String). A Chase Scene, some shooting. Then they all get on a plane and decide to fucking kill everybody, and finally we get what we came for. What follows is about thirty minutes of pure action and mayhem in which all bad guys end up dead. The End.
One bad point is that Jet Li suffers some very noticeable Badass Decay from a meta perspective. He still kicks ass, but his role is a combination of Token Minority and Plucky Comic Relief; he only beats up mooks and never wins a non-mook fight without assistance. It's a waste of a great action star.
Strangely enough, it's actually Terry Crews who gets the best Crowning Moments Of Awesome. He's a relatively obscure actor around here, but his antics with the BFG earned him several rounds of applause in the theatre. I hope the character hits Ensemble Darkhorse status.
All-in-all, I'd say it's worth a casual watch, but doesn't quite match the latest Rambo. Could've been better, given the talent lined up.
Be sure and turn off your brain before you watch it, 'cause it's basically a giant fuck-you to the laws of Newtonian physics.
6/10.