the expendables (sylvester stallone)

[AFlickering]

You remember that time we was up in Bosnia? We took down them Serb bad boys? All our guys were gettin' chopped up all around us and there was blood everywhere. I never though I was gonna make it out of there and I know you didn't and you didn't either. Kinda feelin' like... dead too, ya know? My heads all very, very black place. Didn't believe in shit. Just goddamn Dracula black. I remember I got this bottle of this local shit they have over there. That Silvits... I think that's what it was called. And I ain't feelin' no pain now... and I come up on this, uh... I come up on this overland bridge, and I see this... I see this... I see this woman standing there, ya know? And she's, uh... I stepped out and she saw me, and she's just lookin' right... right in my eyes. And I was lookin' right in her eyes, and I knew what she was gonna do. She looked at me, and I knew she was gonna jump. You know what I did, man? I just turned around I kept walkin' until I heard that splash and she was gone. [crying] After... after taking all them lives, she was one that I could have saved, but I didn't, and uh... What I realized later on was, uh, if I'd have saved that woman, I might have... I might have saved what was left of my soul, ya know...

so reads the completely incongruous tortured monologue by a cracked, pallid, near-drooling mickey rourke in sylvester stallone's absurd action-nostalgia wet dream the expendables. it's an amazing moment that harnesses the potential of both rourke (see the wrestler) and the film itself for a most metatextual brand of anguished introspection, whilst also being ludicrously terrible and jarring in the context that surrounds it. alas, the expendables is a piece of shit, that most misguided of reunions that evokes not the glorious machismo of youth nor looks back with a clint eastwood mix of regret and longing, but rather provides an overall impression of rotting husks of meat slowly dripping into a drain.

it's a fucking shame, 'cause the premise throbs with promise, gathering together a motley cast of legendary (and yeah, mostly awful) action stars to engage in some kind of final testosterone-infused swansong (uh, until the sequel), the idea being that this will serve doubly as a bittersweet montage of the last 35 years of the collective male consciousness. but aside from the way the flesh sags off of some of these guys, the film isn't ravaged by the passage of time, it doesn't seem to be looking backwards or to be much aware of what it represents in a 21st century cinematic landscape. stallone shows little understanding of what made all the classics great (perhaps because he starred in so few of them), with the bulk devoted to clunkily choreographed set pieces, muddled plot developments, empty banter and cringeworthy cameos, stuttering through a splattering of different tones in search of the right balance between fond, jaded, dignified and just plain balls out fun. he probably should've picked one and stuck to it.

i was hoping for something more like the sort-of-amazing JCVD, wherein van damme slaughters his legacy, his fanbase and his critics in one sly swoop, admits his yearning for what once was and what never will be, and comes out of the whole thing less a dumb action stereotype and more a near-indispensible institution. instead we're left with a cheap laugh at the sheer audacity of thinking a 5 minute bomb-planting montage could be fun to watch, or that jason statham irrelevantly beating up some tough guys for shootin' hoops 'n harassin' chicks, before motorcycling off into the sunset with his tart, might somehow serve as a glorious slab of wish-fulfillment for ANYbody in the audience. it's not the wild bunch, it's not rocky balboa, it's not even the a-team or the muppets on 'roids... it's just a genre's decomposing corpse being dragged through the muck. and in a world that's taking small steps toward leaving behind some of the stereotypes these men once represented, perhaps that's for the best.