Wasif's World

Testosterone through the roof. Must ... punch ... someone ... then make their home explode for no good reason.

I know this is a sports blog, but guys love sports. Guys also love fight scenes and explosions. So what better platform to review a true guy’s movie than SportsFanLive?

Warning: I’m going to spoil the movie “The Expendables” for you. This is not to say that you shouldn’t see it. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t go see it ... unless you’re a little girly man. That said, you shouldn’t go see it for any sort of revolutionary storytelling, which is why I can ruin the movie for you.

However, if you truly want to be “surprised,” fine, stop reading. Otherwise, light up a stogie, display that tattoo of your favorite bird of prey, and enjoy.

What we have in “The Expendables,” the latest from Academy-Award winning director Sylvester Stallone (Really? ... Is that right? ... Well, which academy? ... The one that does the movies? ... Seriously? ... That doesn’t sound right at all) is a fun movie whose action scenes make “MI:3” look like “The Notebook.”

Stallone put together a who’s who of every action hero from movies past. If Errol Flynn were still alive, he would have appeared in it too.

So we have Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li as the main leads, and then lesser characters on the team of mercenaries Terry Crews (who possesses the biggest guns, both literally and figuratively), Randy Couture, and Dolph Lundgren. A former member of the team is Mickey Rourke, who is given the only real chance to act in the movie.

Steve Austin, formerly both stone and cold, is the bad guy’s head henchman. And of course, Bruce Willis and the Gubernator, Arnold Schwarzenegger have cameos in one scene.

Jean Claude Van Damme was also offered a role but turned it down. He wanted a role with some juice to it. Uh, yeah, JCVD, if we wanted “acting,” we would’ve asked Sean Penn.

And Steven Seagal was asked too. He really had no excuse for not taking it.

Here’s the plot: A team of mercenaries cooler than "The A-Team” is hired to take out a general/dictator of a small South American island nation, but really, they’re there to take out the former CIA operative who’s controlling the general.

Here’s what happens:
Gun battle
Statham finds his girl with another man
Stallone gets contacted to do the job (Willis, Stallone and Schwarzenegger reunite in a church, sadly, and not in a Planet Hollywood)
Statham and Stallone go down to the island for reconnaissance work
Gun battle
Gun battle in an airplane
Dolph Lundgren turns rogue
Mickey Rourke showcases his acting chops
Statham takes on five weekend warriors playing hoops and stabs a basketball to death
Car chase with gun battle
Fight scene (Jet Li versus Dolph Lundgren)
Stallone shoots Lundgren from about 100 feet away, making sure to hit two inches above his heart, only mortally wounding him
Team mobilizes around general’s palace on island
Continuous gun battle mixed in with fight scenes
Fight scene (Stallone versus Austin)
Fight scene (Austin versus Couture who kills him -- hey, Couture needed something to do, right?)
Explosive destruction of island
Good guys save the day
Lundgren apologizes for his behavior and they all share a laugh about it

It does have a “Team America” feel to it. At the end, Stallone tells the daughter of the general, the damsel in distress, whose father was shot in the back by the CIA guy, “Take care of yourself” as he and his team leave the island.

The subtext is, “Your father’s dead and we’ve destroyed much of your beautiful island including anything of any historical significance ... You’re welcome.”

Are there plot discrepancies? That depends. What does "discrepancy" mean? (If you can answer that, you’re way too smart for this movie.)

First off, be warned, there are subtitles. The filmmakers chose to subtitle some of the Spanish spoken by the general and his army. However, they didn’t choose to subtitle most of the main actors. So much of the time, you’re wondering what the heck the Swedish Lundgren, the British Statham, the Chinese Li, the Austrian Schwarzenegger and the slurring Stallone are saying. Not that it matters much.

Steve Austin and Terry Crews were the most intelligible of the bunch (Willis and Rourke aside). Austin, if only because he says his lines deliberately and in a drill sergeant’s cadence – “DO ... YOU ... UNDERSTAND ... ME?!” The Southern drawl is your only obstacle for understanding him, but it’s not that bad.

(For the record, if I ever run into any of these guys, I thought they were the most brilliant actors I’ve ever seen and you can’t prove I said otherwise, ya hear me?!)

A friend remarked to me during the post-mortem held in the lobby after every movie seen in a Hollywood theatre that Stallone looked like he was in between steroid cycles or just coming down from one that’s lasted about 30 years. Unfortunately, his body may still look like that of a 40-year-old, but it runs like someone in his mid-60s. Having him pulling the girl to freedom while she’s actually pulling him was humorous.

STALLONE: “Quick, come with me!”

DAMSEL IN DISTRESS: “Uh, I’m in front of you.”

The funniest moment (and there were several of them) was when Terry Crews unleashes his gun. Though it’s more like a mini-rocket launcher that can fire at a machine gun clip. Just when you get sick of hearing high-pitched machine gun fire, he starts unloading low-pitched machine gun fire.

Then Crews finds Stallone trying to lift some big, combustible metal tank. He offers to help, “What do you want me to do with it?”

“Just throw it as high in the air as you can over that thing over there that we want to explode. I’m gonna shoot it!” And with a mighty grunt, Crews chucks it in the air, and in his best skeet shooting maneuver, Stallone shoots it causing whatever wasn’t already exploded to explode.

One thing that may get overlooked in the shuffle is Stallone’s ability to reload a pistol. It truly is legendary and underused. Apparently he can reload while still firing. Impressive.

Overall, this movie will win the Oscar for “Most Explosions.” And if there isn’t an award for that, there should be. Also, it should have taken over the title of “highest body count.” It’s up there with previous record holder “Hot Shots: Part Deux.”

You don’t always know who’s punching whom, but you can be sure, when someone goes down, it’s going to be the bad guys.

In conclusion, the next time you face an army of hundreds and only have enough money to hire six people, look no further than “The Expendables.”

I’m going to go chew on some metal now.