Lee: By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and.. Knife!

Director:

Simon West

Producer:

Avi Lerner, Danny Lerner, Kevin King Templeton & Les Weldon

Cast:

Sylvester Stallone as Barney Ross:

Jason Statham as Lee Christmas

Jet Li as Yin Yang

Dolph Lundgren as Gunner Jensen

Chuck Norris as Booker

Jean-Claude Van Damme as Jean Vilain

Bruce Willis as Mr. Church

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Trench

Terry Crews as Hale Caesar

Randy Couture as Toll Road

Yu Nan as Maggie Chan.

Music:

Brian Tyler

Story:

Mr. Church reunites the Expendables for what should be an easy paycheck, but when one of their men is murdered on the job, their quest for revenge puts them deep in enemy territory and up against an unexpected threat.

Review:

The Expendables 2 was awesome. There were some kick-ass action sequences and some of the characters pay homage to other action movies. This has a huge ensemble of action super stars. The only person missing is Rajnikant.

The movie starts off with a man in a hood being beaten up and after The Expendables attack and find what they were looking for, we find out that it is Arnold. They smash, blast and shoot their way through to him. The action sequences were nice, but CGI blood was very prominent. It looked fake. The guns were beautiful. Then they escape and Stallone gets shot.. twice!.. He makes a gun with his hand and Liam Hemsworth’s character shoots the mercenaries. That was one awesome scene. We progress through the movie and see Mr. Church recruiting The Expendables to get some device. They add Yu Naan to the group and she helps them get the device, which is taken by Van Damme. The Expendables then proceed on to Find hime, track him, and kill him.

As I mentioned before the cameo characters pay homage to other movies and sometimes themselves. Chuck Norris’ character name itself pays homage to the movie Good Guys wear Black, where he play James T Booker. In the same scene, Stallone asks him if the rumour about him being bitten by a king cobra is true to which he replies – after 5 days of agonizing pain, the cobra dies, which is again a reference to the jokes made on Chuck Norris.  When Arnold’s character returns towards the end, his first lines are ‘I’m Back!’ which is obviously a reference to Terminator. Then in the airport scene the following conversation was also funny:

Trench: I’ll be back.

Church:  You’re always back. This time, I’ll be back..

Trench: Yippee-ki-yay.
This conversation is obviously another reference to Terminator and Arnolds return to terminator so many times. To which he replies “Yippee-ki-yay!” which is the Willis’ lines in Die Hard 1. The last scene when Church gives Stallone the airplane, he says that this should be in a museum and Arnold replies “We all should be in a museum”.

All in all the movie was awesome fun. Senseless action funny one-liners and very good acting. Some of the characters were underused like Couture. Van Damme makes a great villain, but he looked ugly in this. He looked haggard. This was obviously better than the first and there is going to be a sequel, which will star Henry Ford, Wesley Snipes Steven Segal, Clint Eastwood and (obviously) Nick Cage.

Minus the CGI and by toning down the violence, this could have been a PG-13 Movie. Despite the obvious flaws in the movie, it was awesome and fun to watch.

Final Verdict:

7/10