First Published 8-22-12
I’ve been waiting months for this moment, a time when I will finally gaze into a screen and see something that is more salty and manly than even I. Before this movie was announced, I had considered such a feat not even possible, so you can understand my gleeful anticipation to be happily proven wrong by what was sure to be the shoot-em-up blood orgy of the decade. Adding to the anticipatory and festive atmosphere were two equally salty Army friends of mine, my well-endowed girlfriend, and a bottle of Sailor Jerry. With these things, I was ready to have my mind blown.
Carrying on with the apparent tradition of harassing brown people, our story begins in the mountains of Nepal, in a ramshackle city that seems to be populated by nothing but crying women, guys with AKs, and one dumb fool with a black bag over his head who likes to get punched in the temple. Without much further ado, our Expendables, driving what can only be described as bulldozers on PCP, (think the golf cart destruction derby from Jackass, only meant to kill you) burst into the mean streets and start slaughtering brown people. Seriously, they kill fucking everything. Dolph Lundgren, with the wind in his hair, laughs hysterically as he mows down Chindians. Every time something blows up, the entire team literally cheers. And a lot of shit blows up. They even blow up a fucking helicopter with a fucking motorcycle, which was fucking awesome in Die Hard 4 and is still fucking awesome here (more on Bruce Willis later BTW). The Expendables end up wrecking the days of so many nips that they start to feel bad about not giving them a fighting chance, so they leave their awesome con(de)struction equipment behind to make the fodder think they have a fighting chance. We promptly discover that they as we watch our guys beat no less than seven people to death with their bare hands.
After leaving literally a river of blood in their wake, the Expendables find Mr. Black Bag, who turned out to be a very short-tempered Arnold Schwarzenegger, reprising his role from the first film. Just when you think the scene couldn’t get any more ball-bustingly perfect, the writers throw in a Terminator reference and Thor’s little brother shooting people’s heads literally off just for good measure.
After unintentionally rescuing Conan the Barbarian (and their intended mark, some rich guy), the Expendables celebrate by what else? Getting shitfaced at a bar. What better way to wind down after sacrificing hundreds of people than with a good cigar and a few beers?
After Stallone stumbles out of the bar plastered and makes his way back to his airplane hanger, which we can only assume is where he lives, Bruce Willis shows up to once again talk some shit and harass him. After an intense staredown, Stallone agrees to help Willis with one more task to get him off the hook for sinking that shithole island from the first movie and killing almost everyone settled there. Their task is to find some airplane that an absentminded pilot carelessly crashed in the middle of Albania and reacquire the contents of the onboard safe. During the flight to said crash site, it is revealed that Jason Statham is utterly pussy whipped as he spends most of the hike on the phone with his trashy girlfriend.
On the way back from what could have been a routine and reasonably simple mission, who other than Jean Claude Van Damme himself shows up to dick measure against Stallone, worship Satan a little bit, roundhouse kick knives at people, and just generally act to piss everyone off. Van Damme and his group of guns out-mustache the Expendables and force them to surrender before sodomizing them all and throwing their berets off a cliff. Naturally, our group of He-Men doesn’t like that kind of rough treatment, so they embark on a quest to teach Van Damme some respect by you know, killing him.
What happened after that isn’t clear, mostly because I couldn’t see the screen around the massive erection I had while watching this tribute to sweet HGH-fueled killing machines. But I do remember something about Van Damme douching it up and enslaving a bunch of children to dig holes until they collapse (cuz real men hate children), killing and kidnapping people, and all sorts of other cool shit. I also remember Chuck Norris appearing out of nowhere and Uziing like twenty people (and a tank) while Little Richard played in the background. Yes, there was a shootout set to Little Richard, and it was punctuated by Chuck Norris’s beard and Randy Couture’s ear. Insert the obligatory Lone Wolf McQuade reference and Chuck Norris delivering a Chuck Norris joke (you know, the one about the king cobra biting him) and by golly I think I finally found the one way a Chuck Norris joke can actually be funny, because let’s face it, they normally aren’t.
There’s more banter about how awesome Van Damme’s cartel is (rape, extortion, etc etc), Arnold doing a “Drill Dozer” impersonation, and there was this one part where Van Damme takes over an airport all Taliban-like. The greatest shootout in cinema history ensues, with Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, AND Chuck Norris all on screen at the same time just mowing down a bunch of poor chuds, leading of course to Willis and Schwarzenegger stealing each other’s signature lines and the grand climax. And after I wiped the cum off the seat in front of me, the movie came to a climax as well, with a must-see throwdown between Rocky Balboa and his kickboxing ballerina. Ultimately, Stallone wins and no this does not constitute a spoiler because Stallone has a mustache and Van Damme does not, and everyone knows that the man with the most impressive mustache wins at everything all the time. With the day won and the blood lust quenched, our heroes once again go get drunk and talk shit to one another as the movie draws to a close.
It is of special notice that during the end credits, each actor’s mugshot appears next to their name, and with a flash before they disappear, a big skull shows over their face. Now I couldn’t have been positive, so please verify this for me if you see the movie, but I’m pretty certain when it came time to flash Arnold’s skull, it had a Terminator’s head instead of a normal skull.
UPDATE 11-21-12: It is.
Most of the actors did their own stunts, and Dolph Lundgren remarked that CGI (minimally used in this flick) was for pussies. All told, it was some of the best thrillsex I have had in my entire life, which is saying something because I once had anal while base jumping off of a waterfall. The body count was higher than the first movie, and the creativity level was fine-tuned to a level somewhere between eye-gouging and godly. People were killed by things including, but not limited to, a Smart car, surgery, helicopter blades, bad one-liners, a water tower, a thurible, spit, I-beams, and wolves. If you aren’t a whiny bitch, chances are you will enjoy it for the dumb action movie that it is.