Monday, September 6, 2010

An Expendable Movie, with Charisma

As we started enjoying the 3-day weekend, Christopher and I went out with some friends on Saturday afternoon to see the "blow things up" movie "The Expendables."

For a big blow-em-up movie, with a kind of all-star cast, it seems to have flown mostly under the radar. And... well... that's not necessarily a bad thing. Basically, it's an action movie about a group of mercenaries who get hired to take out some bad guys in some random island nation.

The important thing is that the action heroes in it were - for the most part - in their primes 10 or 15 years ago. Sylvester Stallone is the lead. And there's Dolph Lundgren and Mickey Rourke, and cameos by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and even a couple of professional wrestlers, and "current" action guys Jason Statham and Jet Li. And, although they're really almost more expendable than the men, there are actually two women in it: Gabrielle Itie (as the action heroine) and Charisma Carpenter (as the beautiful damsel in distress).

(Not sure who Charisma Carpenter is, but think the name sounds familiar? She was Cordelia on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel," played a "seer" on "Charmed," and has been in a bunch of TV movies since then. She usually plays smart, beautiful, but flawed characters. And, honestly, I think she ought to show up on screens more often.)

Does it sound like I'm stalling in talking about the movie, by instead talking about the cast? Well, you're probably right.

You see, although I only saw it two days ago, the only thing I really remember about it is gunfire and a couple of spectacular explosions. After we were done watching it, we were standing outside and talking about it. And, while we agreed we admire the guys who were in the movie for doing it, we couldn't come up with anything spectacular about the movie, itself.

Is it just me, or does that make it incredibly aptly named?

Overall rating: B. Basically, it was all that it promised to be, but it didn't fulfill the promise of what it could have been.

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