Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a rundown of last night’s machismo spectacular: Cinemapocalypse. This one seems to be the Alamo’s Zack Carlson’s baby. Zack runs the Terror Tuesday and has a deep love for all things 1980s.
So, with The Expendables coming out how could they pass up the opportunity to feature films from the cast of the flick in an all-night marathon ending with a week early screening of Sylvester Stallone’s epically cast action spectacular!
Here’s the line-up: DEMOLITION MAN, I COME IN PEACE, DIE HARD and THE EXPENDABLES. With trailers for MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, JUDGE DREDD, ROCKY IV, DIE HARD 2 and HUDSON HAWK the night was a love letter to the Action Gods of my youth.
I’m extremely pleased to see a resurgence of love and support for this movie. I remember seeing it in theaters opening weekend as a young teen and just loving it.
One thing that I’ve noticed as I’ve indulged in these action flicks is that these movies seem to only be as good as their villains. I’ll into that a little more when we hit Die Hard, but I think one of the giant successes of Demolition Man is the near insane manic performance from Wesley Snipes as Simon Phoenix.
Simon Phoenix is damn near The Joker in this movie. Snipes is both darkly comical and sadistically threatening. And Stallone isn’t too far off from a dark Batman, either. Except he uses guns. And kills people. But you know what I mean. At its core it is silent strength and intelligence versus a laughing and insane mass murderer.
Demolition Man has such a high rewatchability factor because of its humor. You have a Stallone framed and frozen in a horror-show LA-in-flames reality. Then he’s thawed out in a PC time that is beautiful on the surface, but at what price?
What’s interesting to me about this flick is that it rides the line between being preachy and being a crazy balls-to-the-wall action fest. The film’s secret weapon is Sandra Bullock’s innocent Lenina Huxley. She has a childlike obsession over the violence of the 20th and kind of hero worships Stallone’s John Spartan… but as a guide to this new world she’s invaluable in keeping an emotional connection those tight-ass hippies that run this new world.
Early to mid-90s Bullock is sexy as all hell, too, so that doesn’t hurt.
From the hilarious buzz of the machine spitting out tickets for violations of “the verbal morality code” to the mystery of the three golden seashells to the world dominance of Taco Bell this flick works for me just as much now as it did back then.
In fact, I think the passage of time has helped underline just how smart the social satire of the movie is. It’s a warning against losing freedom for a more security that also happens to be a wildly over-the-top fun, violent blow-em-up.
If you haven’t revisited it recently, give it a watch! If you don’t, Governor Jesse Ventura might shoot you and throw your kimonoed ass into a massive fireplace!
I had somehow missed this movie in its massive run on cable in the early ‘90s. Not exactly sure how that happened as those were the days where entire summers were lost to HBO’s late night programming.
Speaking of, one of my favorite risky shows to sneak while the parents weren’t looking was DREAM ON, which was funny, but more importantly filled with gratuitous nudity. The star of that show, Brian Benben ends up being the straight man in this kind of ridiculous sci-fi buddy cop flick about a giant alien drug dealer with white eyes and a bad haircut who shoots human neck-seeking killer CDs out of his wrist.
It seems that gone are the days of B pictures being this kind of ridiculous fun. Vern would know more about that, but ever since drive-ins went away and every theater had to become a multi-plex in order to survive we’ve lost a piece of our exploitation culture that thrived during the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.
Today’s ulta low budget flicks seem to be a radical step down from the production value and sense of fun that movies like I COME IN PEACE brought to the table. Granted, I COME IN PEACE is the tail end of an exploitation era, but I’m also talking about the films from Roger Corman and even the early Troma stuff.
Watching the flick for the first time I didn’t really have that nostalgia built in from childhood cable rotations, but even without the rose-colored glasses I could see the sheer entertainment value in this flick. Everybody is just trying to make you, the viewer, have fun. The film doesn’t ask you take it seriously, just that sit back and have fun as they do something incredibly ridiculous with the typical buddy cop formula.
Nobody’s going to accuse Dolph Lundgren of giving a good performance in this film, but what he does bring a certain swagger that almost feels completely unforced and natural. He’s huge badass and he knows it, but he’s almost shy about it.
Brian Benben should have been bigger. The man is hilarious in this movie and so great on DREAM ON. The last thing I remember seeing him in was John Landis’ Masters of Horror episode. Isn’t it time this guy had a massive comeback?
I Come In Peace really does feel like the B side to Tango & Cash, films that marked the end of an era. It was around the early ’90s, just before the indie boom, that DTV took over these kinds of movies that otherwise would have gone to theaters (and as a result had a little more time and effort put into them).
And Die Hard. Holy shit, Die Hard.
I recently posted a Behind the Scenes pic from the movie where I sang its praises. Click here to read it! I’ll try not to repeat too much, but where I’ll have to overlap is when discussing the villains of the movie.
As I mentioned above, a hero by himself can only go so far in these kinds of movies. Without a great villain you can’t have a great action movie and Die Hard succeeds here in much the same way that Steven Spielberg succeeded with Raiders of the Lost Ark. His adventure tale had a brilliantly layered villain. Belloq wasn’t muscle-bound. He couldn’t out-Adventure Indiana Jones, but goddamnit he could outsmart and out-sleaze him.
That dynamic is very present in Die Hard. Hans Gruber can’t out-action John McClane. He couldn’t beat McClane in an arm-wrestling competition or a shoot-out, but that Hans Gruber is cool, collected and razor sharp. And perfectly sleazy. I love it when a character has a justifiably inflated ego. “You’re just a common thief,” Holly Genarro/McClane says when she finds out what he’s up to. He immediately takes offense, getting in her face saying, “I’m an exceptional thief.”
Not only is Hans the man with the plan that goddamn well would have worked had McClane not shown up, but he also has a gaggle of awesome henchmen. Alexander Godunov is the most recognizable as Karl, the guy who spends most of the movie in a fury that he can’t track down and murder the fly in the ointment due to said fly’s killing of Karl’s brother.
Let’s also not forget Clarence Gilyard Jr.'s portrayal of Theo, the smart-ass techie. Theo always seemed a little off to me. The dude was enjoying himself way too much. Smart and focused, but he also seemed to be an inch away from insanity.
And Al Leong is in it… as a subordinate that loves him some candy bars. It ain’t an ‘80s action movie without Leong… he’s one of the most recognizable guys from ‘80s cinema. He was in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, LETHAL WEAPON, ACTION JACKSON and is probably most famous for playing Genghis Khan in BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE.
And all that is just the bad guys in the building. Outside we have Robert Davi as a cruel FBI man and William Atherton as the douchebag reporter. Again, two seminal baddies of the ‘80s and they’re side characters in this flick.
Willis has never topped his portrayal of John McClane in the first Die Hard, nor could he ever. Die Hard is lightning in a bottle, magic caught on screen… the culmination of a billion different happy accidents and pure, raw talent. You can tell Willis is hungry here. He’s out to prove himself, stepping so outside his known persona that he was either going to sink or swim. He had to make people believe David Addison could hold his own against such awesome villains.
I’m a fan of the first three films, but much like the earlier alluded to Indiana Jones movies none of the sequels can touch the original.
Now we get to The Expendables.
I’m sad to say I didn’t love it like Harry did. In fact, I was pretty let down by the movie.
Perhaps I went in expecting it to be something it wasn’t, like a return to ‘80s action films… but if I was under that impression it wasn’t because I drew my own conclusions leading up to the release. That’s pretty much been the mantra from Stallone and Co from day one.
This isn’t a throwback to ‘80s action films, it feels like a much higher budgeted and talent filled Direct to DVD movie, with some horribly out of place CG effects. Now CG could be used to great extent in this movie and I wouldn’t have minded it… I just wish it was done better. There are CG laser sights and bullet hits on glass that look just as silly as Wolverine’s claws in that horrible X-Men Origins movie.
But I’m getting off track. That’s all nitpicky stuff, things easily overlooked if the rest of the movie had delivered.
Here’s my main problem… this isn’t a men on a mission movie. You introduce us to badasses like Terry Crews and Randy Couture and then they disappear for the majority of the film until the massive action sequence at the end.
This movie isn’t about The Expendables, this is about Stallone and Jason Statham rehashing the same plot Stallone used for Rambo. Reluctant hero connects with a girl who needs his help. She’s left behind, life in danger and reluctant hero has to go in, against all odds, and get her back. It’s exactly Rambo’s story, but the girl in question, while very beautiful, is given little to do and probably for the best since Giselle Itie’s line delivery makes Dolph Lundgren sound like Laurence Olivier.
I know this sounds like I was sitting there in the theater picking the movie apart. I promise I wasn’t. I went in excited, hopped up on great action flicks. I could tell something was off early on, but the opening with The Expendables going after Somali pirates actually felt right (minus said shitty CG laser sights). There was wicked gore (a dude gets blown in half!), fun interaction between all the members of the group and a real sense of team work.
Then it becomes Stallone and Statham’s movie with a guest appearance by Jet Li who should never play any role in which he speaks English. I liked the dynamic between Li and Lundgren, who are always at odds and have a fun fight scene where they each use their advantages over the other (Li being smaller and faster while Lundgren can take more abuse and has the reach), but it’s almost a throwaway part of the film that it’s hard for me to hold on to it.
It was after the much talked about church scene with Willis and Schwarzenegger that the movie really went downhill for me. The church scene was actually pretty fun. You can tell Schwarzenegger and Stallone are good friends and they spend their 3 or so minutes onscreen together ribbing each other as Willis offers them both the big job.
People who don’t know Willis and Schwarzenegger are just cameos will be pissed, of course, but I thought it was a good scene.
There’s the core problem with the movie right there. There are a lot of good scenes… there’s a great neck break, a sweet real-life aerial sequence with Jason Statham machine gunning from the nose of the Expendables’ plane, Terry Crews’ crazy awesome automatic shotgun…
Tons of nice little moments, but strung over a story that wasn’t thought through.
You know what this movie reminds me of? Once Upon A Time in Mexico. Rodriguez had great ambition with that film. He wanted to do Leone proud with a movie full of crazy characters doing super fun, super violent things, but didn’t spend enough time on the script. As a result you have great scenes (Johnny Depp’s speech about porco pibil comes to mind), great cast, but the rest of the movie’s just not quite there.
Mickey Rourke and David Zayas really try to layer their characters, give them a sense of depth, but neither really feel like they get their due. Rourke is kind of an ex-Expendable, a guy that left the fight, but still hangs out on the fringe and helps hook up jobs for Stallone and his crew. Zayas is the bad guy General who really isn’t that much of a bad guy. He’s being manipulated by a sleazy CIA douche played by Eric Roberts and believes he’s doing the right thing for his people even if his conscience won’t stop bugging him.
It’s an interesting character, but it’s painted in one stroke. There’s no Hans Gruber in this film. You never feel like Roberts stands a chance against Stallone and his team, even if he has a big brute like Steve Austin on his side.
Of course I love Stallone and wish him the best on his resurrected career. Rambo blew my socks off, Rocky Balboa was a touching and exciting final chapter to one of his greatest characters, but I feel that The Expendables is about half the movie he set out to make. I don’t know Sly, I’ve never met him or talked with him, so this could very well be me talking out my ass, but the feeling I get is that this movie is much more slapped together than I’m sure he’s happy with. It feels like a rough drafter, something that could be locked into place with a serious round of reshoots.
For instance, I know what happened to Sly during his fight with Austin. The dude got his neck broken. But knowing that doesn’t excuse their fight just ending off camera and then Stallone showing up saying he just got his ass kicked.
I think a sequel could be amazing if Stallone can honestly look at what worked and what didn’t work with this first film. Consider movies like The Magnificent Seven, The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch (the latter of which seems to the biggest influence on this film) and see just how well the group dynamic works in those films. Jim Brown gets his moment at the end of The Dirty Dozen, but he also gets moments throughout the film, unlike Terry Crews who is introduced and then gets to play during the fuck-crazy 30 minute ending action sequence.
That set piece could have been classic if I had cared a little more for the characters, if I liked Itie’s character and really felt her jeopardy, if I understood the team dynamic a little bit more.
Sure, Statham and Stallone are cool as shit, too, but the movie isn’t called Barney and Lee, it’s called The Expendables. They could totally be the figureheads for the team, the Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen... but there needs to be more team and less tacked on subplots about Statham’s girlfriend leaving him, then getting beat up by her new boyfriend.
I do hope this movie’s a success so we can see the inevitable sequel because I honestly believe Stallone has all the right ingredients, he just undercooked this meal if you catch my drift.
That was my Cinemapocalypse adventure. Hope you guys enjoyed reading along!
Look out for a crap-ton of interviews to hit this week! My remaining Comic-Con chats and some other goodies will be hitting very soon!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
