The Expendables 2

I enjoyed The Expendables.  It was a movie where past-their-prime action stars punched the faces off of some bad guys.  Sure, it wasted almost a third of the movie with inept attempts at character development, but it was gloriously dumb fun.  The success of that film made a sequel inevitable, and the debut trailer made it look like they were going to pack in more stars, which virtually guaranteed less plot, less development, and more boomsplosions, which is what The Expendables 2 should be about.

Aside from the returning cast (everybody but Stone Cold Steve Austin and Mickey Rourke), we get Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and...Liam Hemsworth?  Not even the Hemsworth that was in Thor?  The one they choose for the biggest, dumbest action movie ever is the guy who doesn't do anything in The Hunger Games?!?  He's obviously the least famous actor billed in this movie, but that was still an odd casting choice.  It makes you wonder what other odd decisions went into The Expendables 2... 

...like a dance scene, perhaps?

Barney's (Sylvester Stallone) crew of good-guy mercenaries is back to work.  This time,they find themselves in a tight spot.  Instead of picking their own missions, as is the norm, they are forced into doing the dirty work for Mr. Church (Bruce Willis), or else risk being thrown into double-secret probation CIA jail for the rest of their natural lives.  That means trying to recover a mysterious something from a plane wreckage site in Albania.  Correction: scenic Albania.  The team (Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture and the new guy, Liam Hemsworth) accomplishes their mission, thanks to their chaperone, Maggie (Nan Yu), and is ready to extract, when they are ambushed by a bunch of villains.  The villains, led by the appropriately named Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme), murder poor, innocent, three-days-away-from-retirement Liam Hemsworth, and get away with their "Get Out of Jail Free" card.  That shit's personal.  Enter extreme violence and minimal plot.

Look, it's the one expendable member of The Expendables!

The Expendables 2 was directed by Simon West, which should be an improvement over Sylvester Stallone's direction in the first Expendables film.  The key words there are "should be."  West isn't bad, exactly, but his work here is uninspired.  West is no stranger to dumb action movies, but he doesn't quite make a successful transition from dumb to enjoyably stupid action films with this entry.  What's the difference?  An enjoyably stupid action movie keeps up a rapid pace and varies up the gratuitous violence enough to keep the audience entertained.  The Expendables 2 has some solid action in it, but there is also a hefty amount of downtime, where we are forced to watch Stallone emote; at this point in his career, the only emotion Stallone's face can convincingly portray is "lumpy."

"L" is for "Lumpy"

Overall, though, West makes sure there is action, and he makes sure the biggest names in the cast receive a few moments in the spotlight (for better or worse); in other words, his direction is less than I had hoped, but certainly within expectations.

So, how's the acting?

"Heh-heh.  The blogger made a funny."

Honestly, that just depends on your standards.  I went in with pretty low expectations, acting-wise, but I was still a little underwhelmed.  Stallone does his best to add some depth to his character --- and I think he does a decent job --- but the attempt is misguided in this movie and this role.  If he was just a little more gleefully destructive instead of angsty, The Expendables 2 would have been a hell of a lot more fun.  Liam Hemsworth probably did the best job acting, although his role was clearly designed to justify the extreme violence in the rest of the movie.

...which is, admittedly, a tall order

It felt like Jason Statham had a lot less screen time in this sequel, but I guess his character just didn't have much to contribute; Statham is present in every major action scene, but I thought his role was far less important this time around.  As for his acting, he did a pretty good Jason Statham impression.  Jet Li was barely in the movie, so we didn't have to suffer through the unintelligible banter between him and Dolph Lundgren.  Lundgren was particularly mush-mouthed, and I found it hard to believe he was ever an action star.  But then I re-discovered this little gem on the interwebs and my faith in Dolph was restored:

As for the other Expendables, Randy Couture and Terry Crews weren't given a whole lot to do, which I think was a poor choice, since they both seem to have a decent sense of action movie humor.  I wouldn't mind seeing Crews in a buddy action movie in the near future.  The big news in The Expendables 2 was not the main cast, though --- it was the featured cameos.  Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chuck Norris all had scenes focused exclusively on them.  Norris' scenes were the funniest, if only because they lived up to his internet reputation; he actually came across fairly awkward, like he didn't get why his part was supposed to be funny.

If they had CGI-ed a fist under his beard, I would have given it a pass

Bruce Willis was okay at first, but as soon as he stumbled into catchphrase territory, he was pretty damn hammy.  Arnold was the worst, though; he looked awful and made his Conan-era acting look like Daniel Day-Lewis by comparison.  Perhaps the biggest surprise in this film was how fun it was to watch Jean-Claude Van Damme as a villain.  Van Damme has never been a very good actor (understatement!), but his accent and lack of charm plays surprisingly well as a bad guy.  This is easily his best work since he lost his mullet.

Without having to smile and be likable, Van Damme actually looks cool here

His number two man, Scott Adkins, wasn't as entertaining, but his physical stunts helped make up for the fact that the rest of this cast is too old for stunts.  Nan Yu wasn't bad as the resident damsel in varying degrees of distress, but she wasn't terribly important and basically gave Stallone opportunities to brood.  Charisma Carpenter returned as Statham's girlfriend, but she didn't really do much except look age-appropriately attractive for a few minutes --- bonus points to the movie for giving Statham a love interest that is roughly his own age, a rarity in action movies.

Seriously, though, does anyone care about the acting in The Expendables 2?  Of course not.  This movie exists only for the action scenes, of which there are several. 

Not this one.  This is an exposition scene.

If you're fan of explosions and lots and lots of CGI blood, this is the movie for you.  Especially if you like the middle third of the film being filled with plot and poor attempts at drama.  That's really the problem I have with this movie --- it has action bookends, but the movie slows to a crawl when they try to make the audience actually care about the characters.  Of course, the attempt was hilariously inept, but the mere fact that it was attempted shows how misguided the filmmakers were.  There are eight action movie headliners in this movie, with a healthy supply of supporting action movie veterans, and yet the pace would have to speed up to earn being called "plodding."  There is no excuse for that.  Who the fuck wants a movie with all these action stars that spends any time whatsoever on Stallone's feelings?  Can I see a show of hands?

Exactly.

Here's the thing with The Expendables 2: it was meant to be a ridiculously stupid action movie, but the filmmakers misunderstood how to make that happen.  Instead of stuffing this movie with action heroes doing action stunts that couldn't be believed, like some sort of action movie turducken, they gave into Stallone's ego and let him try to emote.  And then they made the ill-advised decision to let Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis trade catch phrases, which made for possibly the most painful ten minutes I spent watching movies this year.  Even with those problems, it's still got enough action to satisfy most viewers.  Too bad it's kind of boring.

Moonrise Kingdom

Audiences typically fall into two camps when it comes to Wes Anderson movies: you are either under his awkward spell or are baffled that anyone likes his stuff.  Both reactions are fair.  As much as I enjoy some of Anderson's work, I never recommend it to a friend without preparing them for oddness.  Personally, I find myself falling into neither category when it comes to Wes Anderson.  I used to really look forward to his movies --- the one-two punch of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums will do that --- but was disappointed by The Life Aquatic and had hoped for more from The Fantastic Mr. Fox.  If I had to categorize my attitude toward a new Wes Anderson film, I think "the novelty is running out" sums it up best.  It's a little strange, then, that I saw Moonrise Kingdom in the theater.  I was on a family vacation and we wanted to see something that would be appropriate for anyone from my mother to my thirteen-year-old cousin.  And we chose a Wes Anderson movie.

Yeah, it was an odd choice, I'll admit.  But the main characters are right around the age of thirteen.  Maybe this could appeal to the Twilight/Hunger Games generation.

…yeah, okay, probably not.

Moonrise Kingdom begins with Sam (Jared Gilman), a twelve-year-old Khaki Scout, running away from Summer camp in 1963, leaving behind only a letter of resignation.  Sam was the least-liked member of his troop thanks to his incurable oddness, but he was an excellent scout.  His scoutmaster (Edward Norton) can't find him and turns to the local police, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) for help. 

Keep your mouth open.  That helps you look for things.

This story takes place on an island, but that small area is apparently too large for these authority figures to track Sam down.  Meanwhile, Suzy (Kara Hayward) has vanished from her home, leaving her lawyer parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) and three younger brothers behind without an explanation.  In fact, they wouldn't have noticed she was gone if she had not left a note explaining that she was borrowing her brother's record player for two weeks, without permission.  As Suzy's parents start to look for her and enlist Captain Sharp in their quest, it becomes apparent that the two kids have run away together.  And so begins an odd tale of tween romance amidst mediocrity.

They look so in love!

Since this is a Wes Anderson movie, discussing the acting is almost a moot point.  It’s not that they do a bad job, by any means, but Anderson has such a strong hand in directing his cast that their performances are always peculiar (to put it nicely).  The hardest thing about Moonrise Kingdom is that the lead characters are children.  I liked Kara Howard; her performance definitely reminded me of Irene Gogovaia (lil' Gwyneth Paltrow) in The Royal Tenenbaums, and that’s not a bad thing.  She was cold, distant, and not nearly as awkward as her male counterpart.  Jared Gilman wasn’t as good, but he was definitely awkward as hell, in the tradition of other Wes Anderson leading men.  The more I think about his performance, the more I like the little things; it's hard to put a finger on what he was doing right, but it probably has something to do with how well he deadpanned his lines. 

The classic look didn't hurt, either

I was glad to see Edward Norton having fun here.  It's been too long since he's been in a movie I've enjoyed, and he sure played up the sincerity of this character to a goofy degree.  Bruce Willis was decent.  I've never thought of him as a subtle actor --- "yippe ki-yay motherfucker" will do that to a reputation --- and I don't think he benefited from extra awkwardness.  He wasn't bad, though, and the moments where he seems most engaged (with Sam or through the CB radio) were pretty solid.  I was definitely disappointed by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand, though.  I love both actors, but neither had enough time to shine; Murray's depressed character had some great moments ("That's not enough" was a great line) and McDormand's performance showed promise, but neither character was developed much in the final cutting.

I know how you feel, guys

The rest of the recognizable supporting cast was pretty good.  Harvey Keitel had a very bit part, and he was fun to watch.  Bob Balaban played the omniscient narrator, and I think his performance sums up Wes Anderson's direction; he was odd and awkward, making you either hate or love his scenes.  I enjoyed them.  Tilda Swinton --- whose bandwagon I haven't jumped onto just yet --- was very good as Social Services, and I think she would benefit from a larger role in another Anderson movie.  My favorite supporting character --- and an early leader for my annual "Best Bit Part" award --- was played by Jason Schwartzman.  It's not that his role was terribly difficult, but he had some of the film's best lines and delivery.  Plus, as an internet-ordained minister (because why not?), I love his willingness to marry people.

P.S.: Nice 'stache

The direction of Wes Anderson is hard for me to judge.  I love the effort he puts into his films (story, script, set design, supporting material, etc.), and Moonrise Kingdom has the same depth of experience that fans are used to.  All the book excerpts that Suzy reads?  Written by Wes.  You can also assume that any paintings or interesting fabrics you see in the movie were also made on his express direction.  I don't think anyone can fault Anderson for the effort he puts into his movies, even if they dislike his work.  Anderson works strangely with actors, though.  This is a slow movie, filled with many pauses and very few visible reactions.

Example of a typical Anderson reaction shot

Your opinion about the acting will probably formulate your opinion on the film as a whole.  If you like the tone and feel of other Wes Anderson movies, you will feel right at home in Moonrise Kingdom.  If you're unfamiliar with his work, just imagine silly things happening to people who don't understand levity, and that will give you a basic understanding of what the acting is like.  On the whole, I liked the acting and direction here, but it certainly is not for everyone.

If this doesn't make you smile, this film may not be for you

I should point out that this PG-13 movie is primarily rated that because of sexuality.  I thought it was kind cute and (very) awkwardly believable, but my wife was absolutely repelled by the incompetent sexual fondling that happened in a particular scene. 

Not surprisingly, it's the underwear dancing scene

It wasn't intended to be anything other than innocent and (maybe) realistic, but if you get uncomfortable when you see awkward sexuality, consider yourself warned.

Moonrise Kingdom is pretty enjoyable.  I thought the pre-teen romance was handled extremely well and there were a lot of fun moments from the elders in the cast.  Unfortunately, few of those elders had fully developed character arcs.  That wouldn't matter too much normally, but the script spends a lot of time on the adults in the cast, with only Willis and Norton appearing to find anything close to closure.  That is my main problem with this particular film.  There is a larger problem with this movie, though, and that is how similar Moonrise Kingdom is to the last few Wes Anderson movies.  The editing, storytelling, sets, title cards and acting are all unique among this year's crop of films, but they are nothing special when you compare them to Anderson's body of work.  I love that Anderson leaves such a personal touch on his films, but I'm getting tired of him using the exact same unusual style for each movie.  He is a clearly talented fellow, but needs to expand beyond the curious niche he's found if he hopes to continue developing as an artist.  I'm not saying that Wes Anderson needs to genre-hop like Woody Allen (although comparisons between the two are natural), but I hope his next effort is weird and awkward in a different way.

For the record, my thirteen-year-old cousin declared that Moonrise Kingdom was the worst movie she had ever seen.  And she's seen all the Twilight movies.

Last Man Standing

One of my all-time favorite movies is the Sergio Leone spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars.  There's just something innately appealing about a cocky loner who knows exactly how bad-ass he is.  When I realized that Leone stole his plot from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, I went out of my way to find that movie.  It turns out that it is awesome, too.  Go figure, a legendary director made a good movie.  So, when I found Last Man Standing, which takes Yojimbo's plot and appears to give it a noir spin, I figured it was a can't miss scenario.  Apparently, only awesome directors can make good movies from this story.

The obviously alias-using John Smith (Bruce Willis) enters the border town of Jericho, Texas sometime during Prohibition.  The town is virtually deserted of decent folk.  The only normal people left are the wimpy sheriff (Bruce Dern), a kooky bartender (William Sanderson), and the town undertaker.  The only other people in town are split between two warring gangs, the Strozzi gang and the Doyle gang.  Smith happens to be ridiculously proficient with his handguns, and not very shy about demonstrating his talents.  With two violently opposed sides, Smith sees an opportunity to play both sides against the middle and make a lot of money in the process.  In short time, the bodies start piling up and both sides are clamoring for Smith's services.  But how long can one man manipulate so many violent people?

It's a pretty basic plot, and it's been done before.  How is Last Man Standing supposed to stand out from its predecessors?  Well, if nothing else, this movie has more recognizable actors in it that its more famous fore-bearers.  Bruce Willis is decent as the quiet tough guy; you've seen Willis as an action hero before, but this script is pretty devoid of quips, so he just has to look tough.  He does that.  He also looks tired, and I'm not sure if that was an intentional choice.  Bruce Dern and William Sanderson were okay as morally neutral supporting characters, but Dern could have done a lot more with his character and Sanderson's wackiness was occasionally annoying.  As far as the gangsters went, Michael Imperioli got to be a whiny Italian mobster; this movie does show how far he came before The Sopranos started, but it's a role he has played many times in his career.  David Patrick Kelly wasn't bad as Doyle, but he didn't have much of a character to play; he wasn't psychotic, for a change, though.  On the other hand, he's only entertaining when he's psychotic.

Bruce Willis, come out to PLAAEEEEEEAAAAYYYY!

Christopher Walken is the only man in town who is in Smith's league, as far as being dangerous goes.  This sounds like an easy role for Walken, but they decided to give him some scarring and a weird voice, so all his typical awesomeness is lost as he whispered all his lines.  You might also recognize R.D. Call as a frequent supporting gangster or Leslie Mann as a hooker, but neither is particularly compelling.

How can you screw up a villainous Walken?!?

But back to Walken.  How do you make a movie with one of the most audibly distinct actors of this era and mangle his voice?  That's like making a Megan Fox movie that doesn't treat her like an object.  That's like having Fred Astaire acting in a wheelchair.  That's like forcing Jean-Claude Van Damme to not do a roundhouse kick-to-the-face in a movie.  In other words, it's not the way the world should work, people.  You know what would have been a better choice for this movie?  Having him talk like any of these people:

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Walken's voice isn't the only odd thing about Last Man Standing.  Director and writer Walter Hill made several bizarre choices as he adapted this classic Kurosawa story.  It starts with the narration.  Smith is a man of few words, so having him narrate the story seems a bit unnatural.  His narration is barely inflected, too, so it sounds like he's bored as he explains himself.  And, even though Smith is narrating his own story, he doesn't actually give the viewer any insight into his grand schemes.  Any one of those aspects would make the narration bad, but all together they make for some painful viewing.  Beyond the narration, there is a matter of the action.  Yes, there is a lot of action, in the form of gunfights, in this movie.  Some of it is okay.  The rest is either exaggerated or simply dull.  I'm not a stickler for realism in my super-violent gunfights, but even I can tell when something is blatantly wrong.  I don't know much about guns, but I find it hard to believe that Smith's two handguns could lift any grown man off his feet with a blast to the chest.  And he must have had magical magazine clips for his guns, since they only ran out after he finished killing everyone.

His guns are powered by male pattern baldness.

There's plenty of other dumb stuff, too --- why did the guys at the beginning, who wanted Smith to leave town, ruin his car?  When the bad guys get the upper hand, why don't they kill Smith?  They know everything he knows.  Why are armed men immune to Tommy gun bullets?  To be honest, none of that is terribly important, because the entertainment stops well before any of those questions start to bug the logic center of your brain.

Here's a Google image I found looking for "last man standing."  This picture is more entertaining than this movie.

Last Man Standing has a solid story at its core, but making the lead character tired and humorless doesn't bring out the best in the script.  I love the story this screenplay is based on.  I like movies where gangs fight each other.  I like tough guys that narrate their stories and kill lots of mean people.  But I need to enjoy watching it.  This movie is dreary and emotionless.  The action is nothing special, so the one saving grace it might have had amounts to nothing.  I know that Bruce Willis is not in consistently good movies, but I'm not usually bored watching him; when you take away his smirk and quips, though, you're not left with much to watch.  I was hoping that this would be an underappreciated gem with its pedigree, but this film is just poor.

And, just because this movie depressed me, here's something to cheer me up.  Yes, that's Sharon Stone.

Red (2010)

Apparently, America, we are having trouble saying goodbye to our aging action stars.  If you truly doubt that, please explain the appeal of Rambo or The Expendables.  Don't get me wrong, I miss the days when a hero could stand in one spot and shoot down fifteen thousand ninja-Communist-Nazis, without getting even a flesh wound, and I've enjoyed Stallone's increasingly idiotic movies.  Still, it's kind of strange that we haven't seen anybody (except maybe Jason Statham) truly embrace the stupid action hero role, given how important dumb action movies were in the 80s and 90s.  When you think about it, the success of The Expendables is an amusing insight into just how badly we want these actors to keep killing bad guys.  I don't know how intentional this was, but Red seems to be in on that joke, too.

It's kind of like the song from White Christmas...what do you do with a former CIA black-ops agent when he stops being a CIA black-ops agent?  Well, if you are Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), and you are living an inoffensive existence as a lonely retiree whose only friend is a customer service representative at a bank several states away, the answer is simple: kill him.  For reasons unknown to him, Frank discovers that his status in the intelligence community has been changed from "retired" to RED ("retired, extremely dangerous").  Being RED means that assassination squads infiltrate your home in the middle of the night, looking to terminate with extreme prejudice.  However, the "extremely dangerous" bit is an understatement; Frank quickly kills his attackers and begins a quest to find out who wants to kill him and why.

Along the way, Frank has to pick up that bank representative, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker).  He realizes that his phone must have been tapped prior to the assassination attempt and that the next logical step for the bad guys would be to kidnap Sarah and use her as leverage against him.  She's not very willing at first, but as more people keep showing up to kill her, Sarah quickly gets on the Frank Moses bandwagon.  Frank can't unravel the plot against him all by his lonesome, though, which means he needs to find help.  Since he's retired, it turns out that his help is also a little past their prime.  Joe (Morgan Freeman), Frank's mentor, is now living in a retirement home and passes the time by ogling his nurse's ass.  Marvin (John Malkovich) is a well-armed conspiracy theorist that is paranoid to the extent of having a decoy house.  Victoria (Helen Mirren) is a prim and proper housewife, formerly the best wetworks specialist in the business.  With a little help from Ivan (Brian Cox), a Russian spy and former adversary, the group sets out to learn the truth.

I so so so wish he yelled "Flava Flaaaaav!" here.

 I was excited to see this movie after seeing the trailers for it.  It didn't look like a great action movie --- it has Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren, remember? --- but I thought it looked funny.  I was wrong.  It is funny and a good action movie.  This is one of Willis' more wooden roles, but I don't know if I would have bought a black-ops specialist with a talent for wisecracks.  His stoicism was probably for the best.  Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren clearly had a lot of fun in their roles, with Mirren taking particular relish in being the gun expert.  I go back and forth with my appreciation for John Malkovich, but he plays a pretty amusing paranoid here.  Malkovich was probably my favorite character in the film, but I also really enjoyed Brian Cox.  I think I just like the idea of former arch-enemies getting together and reminiscing about "the good old days," when they used to try to kill each other.  Cox doesn't get nearly enough comic work, in my opinion.  Mary-Louise Parker was also good as the relative newbie to all the danger.  Is it just me, or was Parker neither attractive or talented until she turned 40?  Weird.  I liked seeing Ernest Borgnine again, even if he wasn't threatening to shoot anyone in the face.  The rest of the cast was kind of meh.  James Remar was in the movie for all of two seconds.  Rebecca "Mrs. David Mamet" Pidgeon and her ugly jaw was as awful as she usually is, as was Richard Dreyfuss in his small-but-overacted role.  I'm not exactly sure why Julian McMahon took his small part in the film, but he was definitely many years too young for the character he played.  The bulk of the meh comes from Karl Urban, though.  While I appreciate his dedication to the action movie genre, Urban is best when he speaks little and doesn't develop as a character.  Here, he tries to actually act, with little to show for it.

Though this isn't from Red, Ernest Borgnine is still awesome.

This movie shouldn't be as good as it is.  The screenwriters that adapted this story from the comic book series are the same people who wrote the dreadful Whiteout.  The director, Robert Schwentke, has never shown a talent for either action or comedy, with his only other English films being The Time Traveler's Wife and Flightplan.  Somehow, those films managed to collectively gross over $300 million and still have absolutely zero appeal to me.  Regardless, the script was smart, the actors were directed well, and the action was pretty cool.  I don't think I've ever seen so many bullets fired into one suburban home before, but I liked it.

Probably the thing I appreciated most about this movie was that it didn't keep calling attention to the age of its characters.  Aside from an assassin calling Malkovich "old man," and maybe a similar remark made during a Willis-Urban fight, age was not a joke in this movie.  Thank you, screenwriters.  Instead, the humor was largely contextual and delivery-based.  The main actors were all very good, and only the bad guys weren't funny.  The pace is quick, the action is good, and many things go boom.  This is exactly what From Paris With Love should have been, but was not.  I will go so far as to say that Red is one of the most enjoyable action movies of 2010, and the perfect antidote for anyone who cannot fathom the success of The Expendables.

Die Hard

It's hard to believe now, but Bruce Willis in an action movie was considered a risky move before Die Hard.  Sure, he had proven himself as a comedic actor on television, but he also promoted wine coolers.


Looking back, it's hard to believe that anyone wanted to see him blow stuff up.  But it was the 80s, and all sorts of questionable choices were being made --- making John Ritter Ted Danson Bruce Willis into an action star probably made perfect sense to a coked-out film executive.

Thank goodness it worked out.  Die Hard (German for "The Hard") is, without a doubt, one of the top action films of all time.  There are a number of small mistakes throughout the film, but nobody ever notices them until they have watched the movie for the twentieth time.  That's better than quality.  That is the all too rare ability to suspend not disbelief, but criticism.  Die Hard is so awesome, it's mistakes make it all the more lovable.

New York detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) is in Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), and kids for Christmas.  Before heading home, John heads to her workplace, the Nakatomi Plaza skyscraper, because...um...I guess he loves his estranged wife much more than his young children.  Maybe they're just awful little people.  Don't judge him.  As soon as John is in the building, European terrorists take everyone hostage; since Holly's company was the last group in the building, the thirtysomething employees make up all the hostages.  With his police training and the good luck of being near an emergency stairwell when the hubub began, John manages to escape to an unoccupied floor.  Now, it's John McClane, unarmed and (for some reason) without shoes, against a dozen terrorists with automatic weapons.  I almost feel sorry for the bad guys.

What makes Die Hard completely rad?  The actors, for starters.  Bruce Willis got to shoot a bunch of bad guys and make witty retorts like, "Now I know what a TV dinner feels like!"  Take that, lonely man nutrition!  As John McClane, Willis is extremely likable; he's not perfect --- he can't help getting into stupid fights with his wife --- but he knows how to get things done.  Of course, a hero is only as good as his villain (if you need proof, check out Die Hard 2), and this movie has a doozy.  Alan Rickman plays Hans Gruber, leader of the bad guys.  Whereas McClane is a blue-collar guy to the bone, Gruber is very fancy; he has extensive business knowledge, buys his suits from Savile Row, and he is a teacher at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  Right there you have a slobs vs. snobs match-up for the ages.  Gruber adds charm, wit, and ruthlessness on top of those attributes to make him one of my favorite movie villains of all time.  Also impressive is former Soviet ballet dancer Alexander Godunov, as the hot-blooded revenge-fueled villain.

He's like a bare-chested Mona Lisa.  No matter where you move, his eyes follow you.

Sadly, this would be Godunov's last decent film role before his death; it's a shame, because he played a very convincing crazy.  Sure, there are other supporting actors, like Reginald VelJohnson as McClane's contact with the LAPD, or Bonnie Bedelia, that do a decent enough job, but the rest of the cast is just bit parts.  They are stellar bit parts, though, and they make the film so much more enjoyable with their brief appearances.  Who can forget Lakers fan/computer expert Theo (Clarence Gilyard), the only villain that doesn't die?  Or Paul Gleason, taking a break off from playing a high school principal to be the absolute worst Deputy Police Chief ever?  William Atherton was, once again (remember him in Ghostbusters?), a pitch-perfect jerk as the story-hungry reporter.  And then there is stereotypical 80s businessman, Ellis (Hart Bochner):

Hans...!  Bubby...!  I eventually went on to direct PCU!.

Heck, even the bit-bit players were awesome in this movie.  You have FBI agents Johnson and Johnson (Grand L. Bush and future Bond villain Robert Davi, respectively); Argyle, the limo driver, was actually the shoplifting kid that Ray Charles shot at in The Blues Brothers; and Mr. Fu Manchu himself, Al Leong as (what else?) a bad guy with no dialogue.

Fu Manchu, ready to dump a load of action scenes all over Hollywood

It is worth noting that neither Huey Lewis nor the News are in Die Hard...that is just a dude who looks like Huey.

In the director's chair, John McTiernan shows a much better touch with the actors than he did in 1987's Predator.  Of course it helps to have actual actors in your cast, instead of just future governors.  Thanks to McTiernan's help, the humor, action, and drama are well-balanced in this movie.  And each of those aspects of the film are pretty great.  It's not just the dialogue, either; Willis and Rickman show a lot of great nonverbal acting, for both humorous and dramatic purposes.  The action looks really good throughout the film and the story was told in a very clear fashion.  What more could you want?  Well, more professional editing, I suppose.  If you know where to look, you can find Willis' stunt doubles in a few scenes --- they're usually the Bruce Willis-looking guys with the bright white shirts, long after Willis' has been stained with blood and dirt.

That's okay, though.  In my mind, this film can do no wrong.  It's got action, humor, and is just completely awesome.  Do you want to know how awesome Die Hard is?  Here's a list of stupid things in the movie that I don't even care about.

• Everything 80s: smoking in airports, cocaine use, pregnant women drinking alcohol, form-fitting sweatpants, Huey Lewis look-alikes, and limo drivers drinking hard liquor --- it's all good in the 80s!
• If Reginal VelJohnson is a "desk jockey," why was he in a patrol car?
• So, the only people left in the building are the party on the 30th floor, but the doorman makes McClane search for his wife in the computer anyway?  What a jerk.
• The Deputy Police Chief makes some valid points as to why there is not a hostage situation...until he explains that the dead body that dropped from the upper stories of the building was "probably some stock broker that got depressed."  Oh, well if it's "probably" just that, then we can all go home now, right?
• John McClane never tracks down the guy with the "make fists with your toes" advice and punches him in the mouth.
• The closing message of the film is that Reginal VelJohnson killing somebody is a Christmas miracle.  Pity it didn't transfer over to Family Matters.

Here's an interesting factoid: Die Hard, based on the book Nothing Lasts Forever, was actually supposed to be a sequel to the Frank Sinatra film, The Detective.  Can you picture Frankie saying "Yippie ki yay, MF?"  Actually , I can...it would be pretty awesome.  Anyway, without a doubt, Die Hard is one of the quintessential action films, as well as one of the more cheery Christmas movies that you can watch any time of year.

Surrogates

I'm a dork. No, really, you can pick your jaw up off the floor. It's shocking, but true. Even with my near-encyclopedic knowledge of all things geeky in the movie world, I was surprised to find out that Surrogates was based on a comic book series for the same name. Even more shocking, I had never heard of the people that made this comic. Hell, I'd never even heard of the comic's publisher. Are those good signs or bad signs, I wonder?

Surrogates takes place in the future. Well, maybe. A year isn't given, but the introductory scenes give us several news reports with "Fourteen years ago" and the like given for reference, counting down until we have reached the present day. Congratulations, everybody! The present day has android robot things! Just like 1957 predicted! Let's just say that this takes place in an alternate reality and leave the question of time for another day. In the present day, people don't interact face-to-face (hey, you're reading a blog, so you know that), they use a robotic proxy called a surrogate to live their lives. These surrogates look like people, but have android insides, so you can drink ranch dressing all day, e'er day at home and the person that everyone sees is your perfect bodied surrogate. Basically, you lie down in a tanning bed (with scientific things touching your head) and you project your consciousness into the surrogate. That means there is now no violent crime or sexually transmitted diseases. Best of all, overweight male internet perverts who like to pose as naughty schoolgirls in chatrooms can now have a naughty schoolgirl surrogate --- your surrogate doesn't have to look anything like you.  Hooray!

And that's a key point. The movie begins with a surrogate being destroyed by a weapon wielded by a non-robotic person. Ordinarily, that would just be an inconvenience for the user. This time, though, the weapon somehow killed the user, miles away. Obviously, a weapon that can kill someone through their supposedly risk-proof surrogate is a big deal, so the FBI take the case. Agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) and Agent Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell) begin by following the clues. The only surrogate-unfriendly folks around are in the Dread Reservation (named, I hope, because they don't wash their hair) and are lead by the charismatic (and humbly) titled Prophet (Ving Rhames). The possible motive for the crime gets a little more complicated when Agent Greer learns that the dead surrogate is the son of the creator of surrogates, Lionel Canter (James Cromwell), and the son was using one of Lionel's usual surrogates that night. So, was the murder due to philosophical and religious reasons, or was it an attempt for a rival to eliminate Lionel from the business world? Or was it something completely different?

Okay, I have to ask. Shouldn't this movie have been named "Avatar"? Sure, I understand why that might have been a copyright issue, but the concepts behind this and that Smurf movie are pretty similar. In both cases, people get hooked up to a machine and live their lives through an artificially made creature. I would have thought that, with the obvious social commentary in this movie, that they would have chosen "Avatar" as a nod to the digital age. To be fair, this is an adaptation of a comic book, so I guess it should be the writers of the comic that are criticized for their vocabulary. Why do I care? I just enjoy when obviously different movies share identical titles, like The Patriot --- one had Mel Gibson (accent-free Aussie), while another had Steven Seagal (charisma-free lawman). You would think that Seagal was riding on Gibson's coattails here, releasing some straight-to-DVD crap in the hopes that someone would rent his movie by accident, but no. SS beat MG to the punch by two years. The more you know...!

Back to the movie at hand. I wasn't terribly impressed by the parts that made up Surrogates. Yes, Bruce Willis is a pretty solid actor, but he is no guarantee of a good movie (does The Jackal ring any bells?). I'm not quite sure why Radha Mitchell keeps getting cast in so many movies as a female lead. She's not super attractive and she has the kind of range you usually need to be smoking hot to get away with. At least here, she has an excuse for being disconnected from her character, since it's a surrogate. The rest of the cast spends relatively little time onscreen. Ving Rhames, who is often able to salvage a bad movie by being completely awesome, wasn't able to deliver here; perhaps his power is derived from his baldness and his huge dread-locked wig and cotton candy-sized beard acted as an awesomeness buffer between him and the camera. James Cromwell is fine, even if his character is the source of so much of this movie's stupidity. Rosamund Pike, who plays Agent Greer's wife, is supposed to act as the story's emotional anchor, but instead supplies the film with most of its sappiness.

I think it's pretty clear that I wasn't a fan of director Jonathan Mostow's work with his cast. I did like the look and pace of the movie, though. In fact, I really liked the first forty minutes or so, to the point where I was starting to think that I had discovered an under-appreciated gem. In that time span, the movie introduces a murder mystery, dipped deep inside of a sci-fi world, that did not appear to have anything in particular to say about that robot world. The technology introduced was pretty cool and it is a logical extension of what we already do as a society. I found it interesting that all of the main characters (except for Lionel) use surrogates that look very much like themselves. It's a little weird that Greer's surrogate has a head of blond hair on Bruce Willis' noggin, but I find it hilarious that Greer would choose a haircut and hairline that resemble no haircut Bruce Willis has had in the past thirty years. Some of the little touches are pretty cool, too, like police officers getting night vision upgrades.

And then...something dumb happened. Have you ever watched a movie where the bad guy is ridiculously stupid? I'm not talking about the normal James Bond-esque monologuing (although there is a bit of that), I'm talking about a villain taking steps early in the movie to ensure that the hero would end up foiling his evil plot. Do you want to know stupid? Here's stupid --- the villain, at one point, tells Agent Greer that he is too late, and that nothing can halt his evil plan now. That ignores the fact that there is plenty of time for Agent Greer to halt the evil plan, and he can thank the villain for committing suicide and forcing him to not waste precious seconds in witty hero-villain banter.

That's some stupid stuff, but I would have been more forgiving if the film had stayed on its hard-boiled crime route. Instead, the second half of the film spends a lot of time focusing on Greer's marriage and the difficulty they are having dealing with the death of their young son. Boo! Screw that noise! If I wanted to watch a movie about grieving parents, I wouldn't have selected the movie with androids. Detective stories are, almost by definition, all about the mystery. This movie starts out as a detective yarn, but then starts worrying about feelings, about the least detective-y things imaginable. And to make it worse, it was a clumsy and painfully transparent subplot.

The imagination shown in the film's first half ends up coming back to haunt it in the second half.  I liked that workaholics just leave their surrogates to charge at work; why waste time bringing them home, if your next move in the morning will be back at work?  That cleverness just got my mind working, which helped me notice a lot of failed opportunities for similar future design.  Riddle me this: why would surrogates need to drive cars? Why not build models with rocket-propelled roller blades in their feet? Or design some sort of tube technology; if personal safety is no longer an issue, public transportation has a lot of fresh opportunities. They could even ride in buses that treat the surrogates like luggage. In short, having a robot drive an SUV in the city seems like a waste of fuel and space.

The absolute worst thing about this movie is that it could have been so cool. Before it settled for a B-movie plot at the forty-minute mark, this movie was full of ideas and felt like a robotic noir. From what I understand, the film takes several severe liberties with the source material, so this could be blames on the writers, John Brancato and Michael Ferris, who worked with Mostow on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Bad screenplays are nothing new to Brancato and Ferris; they share partial screenwriting and story credits for Catwoman. Still, the movie, like a hillbilly child, had potential until it got involved with the wrong sort of people, so I will be generous and give it

The Expendables

What you get out of The Expendables depends entirely on what you expect to get out of it.  If you watch this, expecting it to be drenched in testosterone and blood (ugh), to have awful dialogue with worse delivery, then you're absolutely right.  On the other hand, if you're expecting it to be drenched in testosterone and blood (woo!), to have awesome action and ridiculous amounts of violence, you're still absolutely right.  As long as you're not expecting an Academy Award-winning period piece romantic comedy, you pretty much know how much you'll like this movie before the opening credits.

The Expendables are a group of mercenaries that handle the dirtiest jobs.  Barney (Sylvester Stallone) is the group leader, with Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) and Ying Yang (Jet Li) as his trusted confidantes; the other members of the group include Gunner (Dolph Lungren), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) and Toll Bridge (Randy Couture).  While those names aren't quite descriptive enough to be GI Joe names, they're amusing nonetheless.  The film opens with the Expendables on a mission to save hostages from pirates.  Obviously, that doesn't end well for the pirates.  In fact, Gunner blows the torso off a guy --- he doesn't cut the guy in half, he blows the torso off the rest of his body.  Gunner later decides to hang a pirate for fun, but that is crossing the line for the rest of the group, so Gunner is stopped and kicked off the team.  So, keep that in mind: blowing people to bits is a job well done, but hanging pirates is taboo.

Barney is later approached by a mysterious Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) for a dangerous mission; actually, Barney's group isn't the only group being considered, but the other group, led by Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger), is allegedly too busy.  The mission is to kill a drug despot, General Garza (David Zayas, of Dexter fame), on the Gulf island of Vilena.  Barney and Christmas go to the island to do some reconnaissance and discover that General Garza is obviously a puppet dictator, with former CIA operative James Munroe (Eric Roberts) pulling the strings and Paine (Steve Austin) providing the muscle.

The film takes a slight detour to add emotional depth and (probably) earn its weight in Academy Award nominations.  Apparently, mercenaries don't have rich family lives.  **PSSST!!!**  Pick your jaw up off the floor!  Christmas stops by his girlfriend's (Charisma Carpenter) house, only to find that, after being gone for an entire month without warning or communication, she has gotten a new boyfriend.  What a tramp!  The boyfriend is a prick and beats her up, so we get to see Statham beat the jerk up and then tell his ex-girlfriend that he was worth waiting for.  That, Charisma Carpenter, is the sound of you being served!  Tool (Mickey Rourke), the group's resident tattoo artist/bar owner/pretty boy is a former member of the team who now spends his time surrounded by slutty young women; he actually is required to cry while giving a monologue about being alone.  For his part, Barney has become obsessed with his contact on Vilena (Giselle Itie), a woman who opted to risk her life on that island hell hole instead of coming to the US with him.  Barney's is not a romantic obsession, but and idealistic one.  He hasn't cared about anything in so long that the notion is incomprehensible to him.  To be fair, the word "incomprehensible" is probably also incomprehensible to him, so it might just be a vocabulary issue.

After the recon mission, Barney and friends (Why didn't they call the movie that?) were going to pass on the offer, but Barney's obsession drives him to take out Munroe, General Vargas, and anyone else that might threaten his idealistic contact.  The rest of the team agrees to go with, because the bond of brotherhood that is formed when bathing in the blood of a common enemy is stronger than any other.  Or, you could just say that they all have a major bromance going on.  After a brief battle against the angry Gunner, the team decides to topple an island dictatorship by blowing the whole island to hell and shooting whatever is still breathing.  Whoops, did that need a spoiler alert?

This film was directed and co-written by Sylvester Stallone, with all the subtlety you would expect from him.  As in any of his action movies, Stallone's direction is hard to gauge.  The action sequences are awesome, particularly the hand-to-hand stuff.  The acting...well, what do you expect?  The top three billed actors are Stallone, Statham and Li; only Statham can speak English fluently.  Actually, Statham's acting was much better than it needed to be in such a dumb movie, and Stallone was correct to give him one of the more emotionally complex roles.  Judging from the rest of the movie, though, it is clear that Stallone can't direct (or write) witty dialogue to save his life.  The plot is (mostly) perfect for a big, dumb action movie, but the dialogue is often awkward.  Do we really need to put up with Stallone, Couture, and Jet Li trying to deliver funny lines?  They couldn't get the timing right for a joke if they had a DeLorean.  That is forgivable, since action movies require poorly executed one-liners, but there is a glaring flaw with the plot.  Why does Stallone bother with the attempt at depth?  Look, I don't give a flaming crap about how these guys feel.   Aww...the elite murderers for hire are lonely when they go home!  >:-[  Did we ever need to understand Schwarzenegger's backstory in Predator?  No!  That is just 40 minutes that could have been better spent shooting people's faces off.  Or they could have had Arnold's team try the mission and die!  That would have been awesome!  Or they could have added a Predator on the island!  Or...well, pretty much anything would have made more sense in this movie than talking about feelings.

The acting is a lot like the writing and directing: not too surprising.  Bruce Willis is good in his cameo, Arnold gives us a reminder that English is not his first language, and Mickey Rourke cries to remind us that he has a Best Actor Oscar.  Randy Couture shouldn't have been given the "smart guy" role, but everyone else is as good as you expect them to be.  Statham is obviously the best actor out of the bunch, Terry Crews is amusing, and Stallone and Li are both pretty bad.  Fulbright scholar Dolph Lungren, while not a good actor, was much better than I remember him from the 90s, so that was a pleasant surprise.

I feel the same way about The Expendables that I feel about Transformers: I paid to see giant robots fighting, and I got my money's worth.  I wanted to see a bunch of action heroes kill the faces off of some bad guys, and The Expendables delivered.  As usual, Stallone tries to give his characters emotional layers, but does it in his typically inept way.  The violence was great, even though the blood was clearly CGI at times.  If Stallone had cut the emotional crap and just blown stuff up and garroted butts off, this movie would be perfect for what it is.  Since he tries to reach for something more than a stupid action movie --- nay, the stupid action movie --- it ends up falling a little short of perfection.  Still, this is a great example of the brainless fun that action and explosions can provide.  I would like to offer one more bit of criticism, though: in a movie called The Expendables, how many team members should die?