MOVIE OF THE WEEK #2: THE EXPENDABLES

Two of us are bald, one of us has had a lot of plastic surgery ... But combined, we make one kick-ass trio! Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and Toll Road (Randy Couture) look to make their next move in the 80s-styled throwback flick THE EXPENDABLES.
Credit: Karen Ballard. Copyright: © 2010 Lionsgate Publicity.

KEY CAST MEMBERS: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke, Charisma Carpenter, Giselle Itié, Gary Daniels and David Zayas

STORY/SCREENPLAY BY: David Callaham and Sylvester Stallone

DIRECTOR: Sylvester Stallone

WEB SITE: www.expendablesthemovie.com/

THE PLOT: A film that features a LOT of explosions, neck breaking kicks, bullets aplenty and knives flying around like flying daggers, The Expendables stars Sylvester Stallone as Barney Ross, a military expert who is the de facto leader of a ragtag crew of men who - when no one else will take the job - will. This group includes: Blade expert Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) - who is having a bit of an issue with his on-again, off-again girlfriend (Charisma Carpenter), hand-to-hand combat specialist Yin Yang (Jet Li), long barrel weapons enthusiast Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), demolition expert Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), a precision sniper who can also at times be a bit of a loose cannon, even by this group's standards. And when it's time to get tattooed, Tool (Mickey Rourke) is always ready to drop some ink.

No strangers to danger, the group finds themselves called into duty by Church (Bruce Willis) to head to Vilena, a small remote island in South America to overthrow the dictator known as General Garza (David Zayas) since his daughter (Giselle Itié) can't stop him on her own. But what Barney and the rest of their group don't know is who the real threat behind Garza is: James Munroe (Eric Roberts), who, with assistance from his henchmen Paine (Steve Austin) and the Brit (Gary Daniels), has no plans of letting anyone or anything get in his way.

THE TAKE: Ask yourself a question - When it comes to your action movies, what do you want? If the answer is a lot of explosions, quippy one liners, a bunch of intense fight sequences and just a general good amount of hyper-violence that will get your adrenaline flowing while making you laugh at how ridiculous it is at the same time, you will likely love The Expendables.

Is the plot deep? Nope! Is the violence a bit restrained? No way! Is the acting spectacular? Of course not! But does the film deliver on exactly what you think it will, that being a fun 90 minutes of shooting, stabbing, kicking, punching and explosions? Yes!

There's really not much to say about The Expendables. Sure, there are some silly moments of dialogue, but the acting as a whole isn't bad. In fact, by action standards (or at least the 80s), it's pretty decent. If you see the trailer and think "cool," you'll love it. If you see the trailer and go, "Nope, not for me," you're probably right! There's not many ways I can say if you don't like decapitations, explosions and bullets that you won't like this movie. Then again, if you can appreciate it for simply indulging its own vices - and in a very entertaining way full of jokes, big explosions (I REALLY can't stress that enough!) and some intense fight sequences - then The Expendables is for you.

PARTING SHOT: If you are looking for a silly, fun little journey back in time to the days when action heroes blew stuff up, kicked a LOT of ass and had one-liners aplenty, The Expendables will deliver the goods all the time, every time.

RATING (OUT OF FOUR POSSIBLE BUCKETS OF POPCORN):