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The Expendables 2 Movie Review

Friday, August 24th, 2012

It hardly seems like two years since The Expendables was in the cinema and now here all shinny and new is The Expendables 2.

This time Arnold, Bruce and Stallone do more together with the added bonus of Chuck Norris.

It opens straight with the best action sequence of the film.  After that it follows a solid (if classically slightly barmy 80s) action film plot from A to B to C without suffering from the occasional incoherence of The Expendables.

It does suffer from some weird swings of tone -opening with a pretty straight action film, moving into a slightly serious men (+ a woman) on a mission line then suddenly swinging towards cheesy humour as soon as Chuck Norris appears.  Fortunately they gags in the second half,  like actors doing each other’s catch phrases and squeezing two of the biggest names in action films into a tiny car, make up for this.

Charisma Carpenter (again) and Jet Li are chronically under used but given the number of overly muscled actors they were trying to fit into the film not surprising that someone got pushed out of the frame.  Maybe there is a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead spin on this in which we discover Charisma Carpenter’s Lacy in a team with some combination drawn from Honor Blackman, Jennifer Garner, Halle Berry,  Sarah Michelle Gellar, Lucy Lawless, Anne Parillaud, Sigourney Weaver, Joanna Lumley, Cathy Lee Crosby, Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kate Beckinsale, Linda Hamilton, Carrie Fisher and Michelle Yeoh.  Jet Li would be the man who can handle himself the lone man surrounded by a team of women 😉

Overall a fun, if a bit silly, action movie that I sort of guess has to result in a third outing.

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