The Expendables 2: Bluray Review
The Movie:
This sequel to the 2010 hit is directed by Simon West and sports the same all star cast of Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture and Charisma Carpenter with expanded roles for Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. New additions added to the already blockbuster cast include Liam Hemsworth, Nan Yu, Jean Claude Van Damme and last but certainly not least Chuck Norris. The team is sent to Nepal to extract a hostage known as Dr. Zhou. While there they also end up rescuing Trench (Schwarzenegger) as he was being held captive as well. Yang (Jet Li) goes ahead departs the group to escort Dr. Zhou back to China. Barney (Stallone) and his new protoge Billy (Hemsworth) speak and Billy lets him know that he wants to retire soon to enjoy life with his girlfriend. Soon after Barney accepts a mission from Mr. Church (Willis) and the team heads to Albania. They grab an item from a crashed plane but they’re suddenly ambushed by a criminal named Jean Vilain (Van Damme). He and his group of thugs take the item (which holds the key to five tons of plutonium) and end up killing Billy. Now The Expendables main focus is to find Vilain stop his plan and get revenge for their fallen teammate.
If you have ever watched an action movie in the 80’s and 90’s and really enjoyed them for what they were then you are going to thoroughly love this movie. If you didn’t……well, stop reading here. Just like the first go around this movie brings the action, explosions and cheesy one-liners that we all know and love from most of the characters. Jean Claude Van Damme in my opinion was perfect as the antagonist of the film. This movie may not bring his career back to what it used to be but I do see it giving him more options than just being typecast as “The good guy”. The only EXTREMELY cheesy things was the characters name: Jean Vilain. Really? Might as well have just called him Jack Bad Guy…haha. All of the fight and gun play scenes in the movie were really good and of course as always Statham shows his athleticism, making it look like nothing was choreographed at all. It really has to be a daunting task to have a movie with this scale, with so many stars and give them all their “moment” to shine but they do a pretty good job of balancing it all out. There were some moments where I felt they could’ve given a few characters a bit more to do (Chuck Norris) but it’s was all entertaining in the end.
Special Features:
Gods of War – A really cool feature about the making of The Expendables 2. With Stallone being one of the screenwriters of the film he provides an informative look at some of the dialogue of the film. He’s quick to note that the cheesy one-liners are all there on purpose.
Big Guns, Bigger Heroes – A really good 25 minute feature about the history of the action hero in the 80’s.
On The Assault – Randy Couture gives us a look at the real life weapons used on the film. If you’re a gun lover then you’ll drool over this feature.
Guns For Hire – A very interesting feature on “Private Security Teams” and the real dangers they face in the career path they chose.
Deleted Scenes – Gives a quick 5 minute look at some deleted scenes from the movie. Not really too much to look at here.
Gag Reel – A pretty amusing feature full of miscues, forgotten lines and weapon mishaps. It’s good to know that even the biggest action stars still forget their lines.
Basically with the movie being entertaining all around and the features being pretty interesting I would say that this is a must buy for any action movie lover.
The Expendables 2 comes to you November 20th from Lionsgate Home Entertainment
