‘The Expendables’ Reminds Us Why Matt Damon Sucks

by John Nolte

There’s much to like about “The Expendables,” especially the simple straight-forward plot, all the B-movie mayhem you could possibly ask for, and two unapologetic hours of masculinity – which may be two hours more than we’ve seen in all of the last decade put together.  These boys smoke cigars, drink beer while piloting airplanes, and return us to those glorious pre-Oprah days when stoicism was still a virtue and real men didn’t gush about their inner-emotional lives like 13 year-old girls drunk on Dr. Pepper at a slumber party.  There are also things to dislike, especially that evil shaky-cam which has done more to ruin a good time at the movies than liberal speechifying.   John Sturges knew what a tri-pod was. Does anyone really think they can improve on Sturges? 

APphoto_Film Review The Expendables

Sylverster Stallone’s glorious throwback to the brawny 80s is also about something, and it’s not Bourne-ian self-discovery. It’s about something that actually matters. And in this age of nihilism when believing in anything bigger than self is considered old-fashioned, unsophisticated and naïve, that’s both refreshing and important.  Mickey Rourke, who has a small but showy supporting role as the proprietor of the tattoo parlor that serves as the Expendables’ hangout, explains it with a single word. I won’t spoil anything, but without this scene, this important turning point, “The Expendables” wouldn’t be half the movie it is. 

Stallone plays Barney Ross (probably not his real name), the leader of a band of American mercenaries who, along with Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunner (Dolph Lundgren), Yang (Jet Li), Toll (Randy Couture), and Caesar (Terry Crews), is willing to go most anywhere and kill most any bad guy for a price. The story opens with a well-crafted action sequence involving Somalia pirates that not only establishes how deadly competent our guys are, but also that they’re not cold-blooded killers.  These are men with a moral code and one of their own breaking that code will be the root cause of deadly complications and a couple over the top action sequences to come. 

The plot gets a nudge courtesy of a self-referential Meeting of The Titans. Ever in search of a job, Barney meets with “Church” (Bruce Willis), a CIA spook in need of some housecleaning that won’t make headlines and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a long-time rival. Cinematically this is far from a great scene, but Stallone the director isn’t looking to please the American Film Institute and the early morning packed house I saw this with buzzed to life during every satisfying moment. 

The mission is to go to South America to rid the world of a Castro-like dictator who’s made a deal with the devil in the form of an ex-CIA baddie played to the hilt by The Mighty Eric Roberts. And what irony that “Eat Pray Love,” starring the less-talented and charismatic Roberts opened the same day.  Yes, this weekend it’s Roberts vs. Roberts – Men Who Do vs. Women Who New Age. 

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Though getting on in years (Stallone is 64), these are still formidable men, experienced enough to know how the world works and that wringing your hands over the nuance of it all is just an excuse for cowardly inaction. They also understand that when a tin-pot dictator brutalizes the self-determination out of his own people, his being in favor of national health care doesn’t make that okay. These are also men who worry about their own skin. No paycheck is worth dying for. But loyalty to one another is, and sometimes they can even be shamed into action — a likely suicide mission — by the bravery of one woman (Giselle Itie) who’s willing to stand for something.  But these aren’t men who talk a whole lot, and when they do it’s usually in the form of affectionate crowd-pleasing insults that might not move the plot or add character dimension, but once again Stallone (who co-wrote the screenplay with Dave Callahan) knows his audience.   

Satisfying is probably the best way to describe this labor of love conjured up by a superstar who sat in the direct-to-DVD bin for almost a decade waiting for America to come to its collective senses and figure out how much we missed him and his kind of action filmmaking.. There’s also a kind of validation that comes with the price of admission, especially for those of us who couldn’t figure out why in the hell anyone would call metro-sexuals angsting over calling evil what it is and apologizing for America an action movie. 

“The Expendables” proves us right. 

Matt Damon sucks and the eighties freaking ruled.


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Posted Aug 14th 2010 at 11:01 am in Featured Story, Film, Religion | 191 Comments