I recently wrote about how watching the shitty knock-off reboot Predators felt like being reluctantly ushered into adulthood by way of its brand of cheap nostalgia pandering. My viewing of The Expendables was similarly depressing, making me feel suddenly quite old and somehow also mocked, like the pop culture passions of my youth were being made to look silly instead of celebrated (they of course are silly). Much like Predators, The Expendables was created to milk a strain of nostalgia that is particularly potent right now, as GI Joe-hoarding, Rambo-quoting children of the 80's go from being 20-something boy-men to 30-something man-boys. Written, directed and starring Sylvester Stallone, it also serves as particularly embarrassing and naked upper mid-life crisis therapy.
Along with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone is a cinematic icon and former box office champ. His face (or at least his former face) is known around the world and his alliterative name is synonymous with action. He is the diminutive yet pumped body behind two hugely successful franchises in Rocky and Rambo, both iconically charged and yet diminishing film series' that boiled down complicated issues of masculinity, personal determination and pride into one-word sub genres that spawned legions of clones. At various times in his career, Stallone has not just played both Rocky and Rambo, but inhabited the archetypes these characters represent. Like Rocky, he pulled himself up out of obscurity and struggle to become an international sensation. And like Rambo, he has been an outsider forgotten by the former system that propped him up, going it alone in the business of being Sylvester Stallone, choosing to finance and helm his own pictures. And like the shirtless, monosyllabic Rambo, Stallone it seems is getting to have the last laugh. His Rocky Balboa, Rambo 4 and now The Expendables were all made on the relative cheap and managed to once again regain the lustre of his 80's box office receipts. Stallone of course can't let go of his former glory, and so The Expendables is yet another futile attempt to stay relevant (and also pay for another renovation on his 5th chin)
If bajillionaire megalomaniacs made for good underdogs, you'd likely be cheering Stallone on. But at least in the case of The Expendables, what appeared to be a genuine love-in for 80's action movie nerds is actually just a poor, derivative action movie. It was promoted as a celebration and a sort of send-up of the tropes of the genre--an action movie Woodstock attended by the biggest names in action. Except it doesn't really seem very self-aware at all and in fact betrays the stock underpinnings that we nerds love in favour of a new douche aesthetic. Yeah there's plenty of faceless henchman getting shot up, but there's also serious Ed Hardy, screen-printed Eagle vibe coming off this thing. And as for the guest list? It would seem that most of the A-list invites didn't bother RSVPing. Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal are both no-shows. Where's Kurt Russell? How about Chuck Norris. Or fuck, I don't know, even Micheal Dudikoff? Instead we get a UFC guy, a WWF guy, precious little of Dolph Lundgren and Terry Crews, who to my knowledge is not even a bit player in the action genre. Since I was a little kid I have dreamed of some po-mo commingling of all my favourite action heroes. My fantasy movie was John McClane joining forces with Dutch and Frank Dux and Snake Pliskin and Mason Storm and on and on. Basically a big fucking orgy of muscles and one-liners and slo-mo roundhouse kicks. The Expendables could never hope for that, but promises something along those lines, and fails to deliver. Whereas Rambo (2008) distinguished itself with liquefied ultra-violence, The Expendables really doesn't make much of an impression at all beyond a gallery of ill-advised close-up shots that prompt "holy shit can you believe how much plastic surgery BLANK has had" moments. It's a toss up between Stallone himself and Mickey Rourke, but Eric Roberts is no slouch in the fucked-up face department either.
How does that saying go? "You can never go home again"? Well apparently you can never watch your childhood heroes shoot blanks at stunt men again, either.
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