The Expendables

Dena and I cashed in the free movie pass we won for the big screen at Wehrenberg Theater. Fortunately, an action flick was on which made the most of the expanse.

If you caught a preview of it, you probably saw Arnold Schwarzenegger. You may have thought, "Should he be governing his state rather than taking on a movie role?" And apparently even Schwarzenegger agrees... his cameo lasts two minutes, tops. I took it to be a commercial for a future possible presidential bid. In fact, Sylvester Stallone remarks "He wants to be President." In fact, his commercials are probably longer than his on-screen time here.

Ditto Bruce Willis. He appears for about two and a half minutes. All of which was fine by me. Just don't come to the theater based on the ten-second preview clip where all three action heroes are in the same scene, expecting Arnold and Bruce to contribute much more.

Granted I was rebounding a bit from my last two movies, but this one struck the right chord. Dena liked it too, since we were both expecting a shoot-em-up movie.

Plot: A rogue American has risen to power on a tiny Gulf island. The locals are terrorized. Drug trafficking is the economy. A lone beautiful Latino woman stands her ground.

Enter the mercenary Expendables, a tattoo-ridden, swaggering, smirking half-dozen dudes who charge millions per mission and get the job done without fail. We laughed out loud several times, not because of the witty writing (though they tried to be comic) but due to the unbelievable, gotta-be-kidding-me good fortune of the seemingly unhittable heroes. Six guys versus three hundred soldiers, and you just know who's going to win. Personally, my favorite was the ten second sequence where the black guy marches down a soldier-stuffed hall with a mega-cannon in one hand and literally blows guys to smithereens one shot at a time.

Fortunately, there is also no romantic interest here. That is good, because the good guys are all wrinkly.

For a moment, I thought it would be cool that Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago were now on the same team. But then it turns out they're not.

There is some genuine heart here - the principled girl who could've ended the movie in the first half hour if she'd have fled the island. But she chooses to stay - and the Expendables' quest to save her lives on.