Missing in Action 4: The Return of Chuck Norris (albeit briefly)

THE EXPENDABLES 2 (2012)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I am all for big, dumb, explosive action porn. I am not a devotee of the today's "Fast and Furious" school of Excess but, I admit with reservations, there were some decent Golan-Globus pics back in the 80's and there are some decent ones nowadays. There were also some terrible ones in the last two decades that offered nothing more than assaulting your senses with brain-dead dialogue and various explosions. "The Expendables" was a return to the old Stallone/Schwarzenegger/Van Damme/Lundgren macho action pics with barechested, brawny G.I. Joe types whose heroism was defined by their body count. "Expendables 2" is virtually action movie porn with the emphasis on CGI-blood effects, machine gun fire, and lots of bareknuckle fights and more Digitally Magnified Thud Sounds. For some, this is enough. For me, the first film offered a tinge bit more.

The macho mercenary gang who are all full of sound and fury exchange gunfire right at the beginning of the film, during a rescue attempt of one of their captured mercernaries, Mr. Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren and company are all on board, exchanging occasional quips and extreme bravado. Back home, Stallone welcomes a new member to the group, a young sniper named Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) who wants to retire, and disapproves of another new member, Maggie Chan (Yu Nan), a technical expert who is handy with a weapon. Nan's Chan is the brightest spot of this bunch. Of course, old scores need to be settled as Stallone's G.I. Joe group are commissioned by Mr. Church (Bruce Willis), a CIA operative, to find a suitcase equipped with a computer that pinpoints the location of plutonium in a Russian abandoned mine. After we get precious little exposition, the gang finds themselves in Russia and smack in the middle of the evil arms dealer, Jean Vilain (Jean Claude Van Damme), who wants the computer. Vilain? Goodness me. I miss the days of clever villainous names like Ernst Stravos Blofeld.

I rather not give away too much of the hairline fracture of a plot except to say that one of the testosteroned members of the Expendables is killed and it becomes a revenge story. If only it were more fun and involving. There are shootings galore, knives thrust into bellies and heads and necks and various other body parts, bones crushed and broken and split in innumerable ways, several bareknuckle fights which go on longer than any realistic fight, and lots of machine gun fire. I mean RAT-A-TAT-TAT on overload. There is one sequence where Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, Crews and even Chuck Norris fire one round after round in complete unison. And speaking of Norris, he plays Booker, a retired military operative who is practically a one-man army who materializes out of thin air - a deus ex machina for those raised on Golan-Globus action epics. Why are the Expendables needed if this guy can mow down hundreds of villainous minions and destroy a tank in a matter of seconds? Missing in Action, much?

I found Norris and Yu Nan to be the best thing about this empty-headed exercise in plotless brutality. The first "Expendables" was a no-brainer but a mildly fun excursion that eventually went into near-Michael-Bay extremes. However, it also had moments to pause for character reflection and Stallone, who wrote and directed the first film and is replaced as a director here by Simon West, included some real-life aspects of war and torture to give it more of a spin. Here, this is all brawn and action dramatics dialed up to 111. The heroes, including the usually dynamic Jason Statham, are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Fight, kill, maim, destroy and laugh about it in the process with, ironically, no real trace of humor or character definition. 1984's "Missing in Action" at least contained a little more restraint.