Film Sweat: Not Again
NOT RECOMMENDED: We guess the logic here is this: Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Chuch Norris can no longer headline a film on their own, so let’s try to throw them all into the same film (Bruce Willis and Jason Statham on the other hand must have owed Sly some money). We’ll round out the cast with Terry Crewes and baby Thor, and it’ll be great. Never mind that the first film, called The Expendables, featured no good-guy actually dying, let’s make another one called The Expendables 2 where most likely no one will die again, except for thousands of bad guys.
This is the Old Dogs of action films. It’s Space Cowboys, it’s Grown Ups. It’s Wild Hogs but with creatine-injected men whose overtanned leather skin is drooping farther and father away from their punch-drunk brains. But mostly, it’s a waste. It’s debatable whether the action films this is modeled on, the ones from the 1980s heyday of catchphrases and never reloading, were ever in on the joke, but with Willis making Rambo jokes, Ahhhnold ripping the doors off of a smart-car, and Dolph Lundgren mumbling his way through incoherence (and walking around like a marionette with some stuck joints), you’re better off just sitting down with True Lies, or Predator, or even Street Fighter.
ALSO NEW IN THEATERS: ParaNorman, a Burton-esque stop-motion film created using 3D printers and a sub-$3,000 camera because THE FUTURE; The Odd Life of Timothy Green, which is being billed as the feel great movie of the year and stars Joel Edgerton, who always looks like he is swollen from being repeatedly punched in the face; 2 Days in New York at the Ritz Five, which features the Julie Delpy/Chris Rock collabo we never knew we needed; and Celeste and Jesse Forever at the Ritz East, written by and starring Rashida Jones alongside a serious Andy Samberg.
For more recommendations on films currently in theaters, visit Philebrity’s Film Sweat archive. And click here for movie times. Need repertory film? Try Cinedelphia.
