First of all, here’s the teaser if you haven’t seen it or need a refresher:

Well, this teaser does a good job of tricking me into thinking I care about these characters and can’t wait to see them again. The truth is I’m more excited to see them get a second chance at doing something. Sure, Stallone’s Barney Ross and Statham’s Lee Christmas had storylines, but some of the other Expendables were pretty much just background characters. Maybe since they came back for another round they’ll be rewarded. Maybe.

We know that Bruce’s part is at least slightly expanded, because he’s shown in more than one location. The reunion of Stallone’s character Barney and Bruce’s “Church” is full of menace this time instead of winking and nudging. Actually seems kinda dramatic.

It’s a nice looking, moody sort of lighting too. Seems like a better looking movie than the first one.

I like this shot of Barney listening to Church’s threat. He doesn’t look quite as beaten up by life as Rocky Balboa in ROCKY BALBOA, but he looks kinda sad. I hope Barney gets a little more going on inside in this one. Maybe.

So they bring back the skull-winged-with-weapons logo, but this time stabbed in the eye sockets. Get it? Two knife handles. Part II. Think about it. It works.

Has anybody else noticed how many trailers use weird electronical bass noises like that ever since they started advertising the TRANSFORMERSes that way? If you want your trailer to be dramatic you gotta have a logo flipping around going BEEEEEEEEeeeeeyoooooowwwwwTTCHZZZZZZZKKKKKKKKZZZ!!!! That’s what audiences demand.

I guess Barney still likes wearing the beret. That’s his thing.

Oh wait, Christmas wears a beret too. That shows that those two are best buds. It also means they’re still the two main characters. Or maybe I just think that because I noticed the end of the trailer was copyrighted by “Barney’s Christmas Productions.” (No joke.) I like that they got Lee manning a gun on a turret again, since that part on the seaplane was the highlight of part 1.

Uh oh. Jet Li is the only one that doesn’t get a cool walking-toward-the-camera or holding-a-gun shot. This confirms the rumors that he’s not in this one very much. I’m thinking he must be the one that dies and they have to get revenge. But I guess not having an action shot implies that he doesn’t even go on the mission. Maybe he doesn’t need the money anymore, or just got sick of all the comments about being small. Even though he made most of them himself. Maybe he finds out that his character’s name is “Yin Yang” and quits on the spot.

Now that’s more like it. Dolph as Gunnar looks pissed. The turmoil of drug addiction and guilt for having betrayed his friends boils inside him, or whatever. There is actual debris involved, that means some action is going on. You don’t get ceiling debris while standing around talking. Gunnar better not be the one that dies at the beginning, that would be sort of a waste of his miraculous resurrection in part 1. But it would explain Jet Li not going on the mission. He hated that dude, why would he help avenge him?

The biggest icon new to the sequel cast is Chuck Norris. I am not the biggest Norris fan, but I think he’s earned his place in the movie. I can’t really tell if this is a villainous pose or just an “I’m awesome so I wear sunglasses” one. My hope is that he’s playing an arrogant asshole like he did in the best movie he will ever do, WAY OF THE DRAGON. He doesn’t seem to be wearing American flag pants, which would be my second choice for him.

This shot of course gets you excited for the return of the most beloved character in THE EXPENDABLES. Also pictured: Terry Crewes as Hale Caesar.

My personal favorite Expendable is Washingtonian and UFC Hall of Famer Randy “The Natural” Couture as Toll Road. He had that monologue about the origins of his cauliflower ear, and there was that part where he was on the plane reading a book. Okay, he doesn’t get jack shit to do in the movie, but I think the combination of his demonstrable badassness, his unconventional looks for a movie star and his regular-guy-but-intelligent speech make him a really compelling screen presence. So far his best role was in an episode of The Unit, so his full movie potential has not been reached. And probly won’t in this movie. But this shot I like because it just screams “Randy Couture is in at least one shot of this movie!”

A young actor named Liam Hemsworth plays the surprised-they-didn’t-pull-this-shit-in-part-1 “young rookie who joins the team” character. According to IMDb his character is named “Billy the Kid,” which is kind of a let down considering some of the other crazy character names. It should be something like Rench Greasestain or Rocket Bluntside.

My old Ain’t It Cool colleague Drew McWeeny says that Hemsworth getting “last-name-only status” in this trailer is a sign that “Lionsgate is feeling good about the prospects of HUNGER GAMES,” which is apparently another movie that he’s gonna be in that people are excited about because it’s based on some books that the kids like and all movies based ona series of books change the world forever. I don’t know anything about that so maybe I’m wrong but I disagree, I definitely think it’s what we’ve already been discussed in the comments, it’s an attempt to make you confuse him with his brother who plays Thor. It’s this:

Squanderers are people who would never squander the opportunity to take advantage of their famous last names. (Surprisingly not named at the top of this VHS tape: Estevez. Joe Estevez.) And for the record, some of us here did say “I don’t know Chris Hemsworth was in this” when we first saw it on a poster.

Speaking of weird credits:

Mark me down as a fan of the “ALSO VAN DAMME” credit. I don’t remember ever seeing an “ALSO” credit before. That’s just how packed this cast is. If they do a part 2-knives-in-the-eye-sockets-and-one-in-the-nose-hole it’s gonna be “INCLUDING VENTURA,” “ALONGSIDE GRUNER,” “FURTHERMORE, YEN” and “MEANWHILE, JAI WHITE.” They’ll save the “OH SHIT, I ALMOST FORGOT” credit for part IV.

I love picturing Van Damme’s management sitting down with the Millennium Films team of lawyers trying to agree on a special credit that denotes a higher ranking than just being named but a lower ranking than the “WITH” that Bruce gets and the “AND” that Schwarzenegger gets. I think they got it right. Van Damme deserves an “ALSO.” He earned it both with his career as a whole and with having the balls to turn down THE EXPENDABLES the first time so he could spend more time on a way better movie about reanimated corpses fighting each other in a nuclear power plant.

Harry Knowles recently debuted a new EXPENDABLES 2 poster and he said “that poster that made the rounds a couple weeks back, according to Lionsgate, that wasn’t their poster and they don’t know where it came from.” Yeah, you know how the fans are, they’re real sneaky about getting ahold of unseen pictures of all the cast members wearing the same costumes from the trailer and then correctly predicting that there would be credits for “HEMSWORTH” and “ALSO VAN DAMME.”

(I’m sure Lionsgate is just covering their ass after pissing off one or more of the actors – Jet Li wasn’t pictured, Couture wasn’t named, etc.)

Anyway here’s JCVD himself, brandishing a knife. I’m excited to see him playing a bad guy, I think he’ll do a good job. And hopefully IMDb is not lying about his name being “Jean Vilain.” But the most important thing about this shot is that UNDISPUTED 2-3’s Scott Adkins is standing behind M. Vilain on the right side of the frame. It should say “ALSO ALSO SCOTT ADKINS.”

Here’s the proof that CIA-connected mercenary-mission-giver Mr. Church actually gets in on the action this time. This is my favorite shot in the trailer. Actually his name isn’t Church, he just suggested that as an alias while meeting with Barney in a church. I can’t really tell from this trailer what the room is where he meets Barney this time. Maybe he’ll go by Mr. Abandoned Warehouse in this installment. Whatever his name is, I hope he miraculously turns good guy like Dolph in part 1 or reluctantly teams up like The Rock in FAST FIVE.

There you go everybody, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Trench firing a gun. Looks like the same scene as Bruce, so we’ll either see them shooting at each other or shooting with each other. Either one would be historic. Or, I guess they could show up in the same room at different times and shoot in separate conflicts. There are alot of possibilities here. We got until next summer to figure it out. Or we could not think about it again until we get to watch it. Either way.

And so it was that in the late ’90s and early 2000s Jet Li left Hong Kong to make some Hollywood-produced, English language movies. Of course if you have a guy who’s a legendary martial arts champion and iconic star of many of his generation’s most popular movies (the SHAOLIN TEMPLE series, the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA series, the FONG SAI YUK series, and FIST OF LEGEND) what you do in the U.S. is put him in a movie with DMX and Anthony Anderson that’s billed as “an urban Romeo and Juliet.” I mean, what else would you do with him? That’s just obvious.

After the preposterousness of ROMEO MUST DIE a Jet Li movie produced by Luc Besson seems like a step in the right direction. Back then LEON wasn’t so long ago, and he’d recently produced a pretty good action movie called TAXI. DISTRICT B13 and the TRANSPORTERs would be coming up soon too. As a director he had a strong visual style, a sense of humor and a love of Hong Kong style gunplay and physicality. It seemed like he could be the one to figure out how to make Jet Li shine in a Hollywood style movie, right?

Nope. Not really.

In ELV2(NCLW4) (English language vehicle #2, not counting LETHAL WEAPON 4) Li plays Liu Jian, a Chinese cop sent to Paris to help French cops spy on a Chinese gangster. But then a hooker stabs the gangster and it’s a setup to frame Liu for the whole thing so he runs off.

The hooker has a big dragon tattoo on her back, by the way. She is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – not the famous one, but one of ‘em. I assumed her stab was the titular Kiss of the Dragon, but then we don’t see her character again. Luckily it’s explained at the end what the title means. Phew, that was close.

But there was a second hooker named Jessica (Bridget Fonda) who was supposed to be there too. She got freaked out and hid in the bathroom. It turns out she works for Richard (Tcheky Karyo), the corrupt French police Inspector who set up Liu. To be frankly honest I do not care for this individual. He forcibly shoots Jessica up with junk and abuses his power to take away custody of her daughter and then wave it in front of her like a carrot on a stick. Or a cupcake or something if you are not a rabbit or deer and wouldn’t get that excited about a carrot. On the positive side he has a pet turtle. (I try to have something nice to say about anybody.)

Coincidentally Jessica’s prostitution spot is right in front of the shrimp chip shop where Liu is staying. Neither of them recognize each other from the hotel assassination incident. There’s a really awkward scene where she wants to use the bathroom to pee but he thinks she’s gonna shoot up in there so he says no but she threatens to piss on the floor so he lets her in and she passes out on the john and he scrambles to get her out of there because he’s really worried that the guy that runs the place is gonna come home and get mad. At least it’s something we can all relate to, but I think Jet’s talents have been used for better scenes before.

Liu is no fan of junkies, but he’s okay with needles. This character’s most unusual trait is that he wears a wristband filled with pins. When he’s in scuffles he’ll pull one out and prick somebody with it. They might be poisoned but I think it’s supposed to be accupuncture – he knows the right place to poke somebody to knock them out. Maybe a good badass juxtaposition for a character would be if they did needlepoint, like Rosey Grier. Then if somebody attacked them while they were sewing they’d have these needles, they’d know what to do.

I guess Bridget Fonda’s days as a leading lady didn’t last long, and this character was doing her no favors. I mean I feel sorry for her, I want Liu to help her get her daughter back, but she’s kind of annoying. If I were Liu I’d have her wait somewhere while I took care of it. I don’t know how intentional it is, but while she doesn’t exactly look like the average hooker on the street she’s got a certain amount of hooker nastiness that adds authenticity. I think the drugs would add more wear to her face, but at least they got a hooker with an addiction, that usually gets whitewashed in the movies.

Liu is very polite to Jessica, but he has a good mix of compassion and repulsion (repassion for short). Sometimes he seems like he doesn’t want to even touch her because he’d have to wash his hands. I like that.

Liu has to prove his innocence and he simultaneously tries to get back Jessica’s daughter who’s been sealed away in an orphanage. The main henchmen that come after him are “the twins,” two bleach-blonds in flight jackets. One is giant and the other, the little guy, is Cyril Rafaelli, the co-lead of the B13 movies (and henchman in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD).

Since I knew Rafaelli from those other movies I waited in anticipation of him fighting Li. The first time it happens it’s confusingly edited, a disappointment. Later there’s another showdown between Liu and the twins and that one’s got some good moments. A bunch of glass gets broken, then they get their hands scraped across broken glass. Rafaelli uses the famous Hong Kong “come here” hand gesture, which seems awfully cocky against Jet Li. The funny part is when he uses it but then Jet Li “come here”’s him back and they go back and forth for a while like “no, you come here.” “No, you come here.” “No, I’d rather you come here.” etc.

There’s also a pretty good battle on a boat, with Liu climbing on top and what not. It’s not that spectacular of a stunt but it brings you back to the days when stunts were a big part of action movies.

Inspector Richard is similar to Gary Oldman’s character in LEON. He’s a sadistic and depraved criminal who gets away with everything because he’s also a police inspector. But since he doesn’t ever get mega like Oldman he’s not nearly as fun to watch. The pet turtle really is a nice touch though. The difference between the hooker and the pimp is illustrated by the differences in how they treat the turtle: Richard puts the poor guy in a drawer, Jessica frees him on a lawn and says “See you around.”

He’s a hatable guy, but not a fighter, which makes him kind of a weird antagonist for a movie that’s supposed to introduce Jet Li to a new audience. Luckily the titular sign of affection from a mythical beast makes for a deservingly brutal death for this guy. (SPOILER)

I didn’t mind watching it once, but it’s not very good. Li looks small and Pee-wee Hermanish. I thought it was his outfit in FIST OF LEGEND that looked like Pee-wee Herman, turns out it’s his face and haircut too. This movie emphasizes the squeakiness of his voice (sometimes dubbed by another actor in his Hong Kong movies) and his limited English at the time, meanwhile not giving him a chance for fights as impressive or drama as effective as his best movies like FIST OF LEGEND. I think Besson got better at showcasing Li by the time of DANNY THE DOG/UNLEASHED and crazy action by the time of B13.

If KISS OF THE DRAGON was my first Jet Li movie I’d probly wonder what the big deal was. But it wasn’t my first Jet Li movie so everything’s cool. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay.

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that THE EXPENDABLES turns out not to be the WILD BUNCH or ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST of mercenary movies that we all knew it should but wouldn’t be. It offers much of the joy promised by the list of names on the poster, but fails in many of the areas that the movies they’re known for succeeded in. For a movie so full of action stars it sure looks a hell of alot like a post-action movie, and for a tribute to old school action it wouldn’t've hurt to get out some of the old blood packs after they saw that their CGI exploding people weren’t acceptable to use in a professional movie. I swear in the opening scene I saw a cartoon drawing of green slime come out of a guy.

Before I go on I want to mention that I made a point of seeing this at an evening show, thinking it would be good to see it with an appreciative crowd. Big mistake. This was in the top 5 shittiest bunch of stupid assholes I ever saw a movie with. There was literally an entire row across of drunk video game nerds with loud, deep voices who seemed like they were created by programming all the worst talkbacks into husky android bodies. They had to boo and giggle and comment and talk to each other about every god damn thing on screen, and almost worse they had to overenthusiastically whoop and holler at any machine gunning or explosion, whether it earned it or not, making everybody else feel kind of stupid for enjoying it. When various other people in the theater tried to revolt one of them had the entitled tenacity to say, “I paid $11 for this movie!” And the tone of his voice said, “Shame on you! How dare you?”

In front of them were a couple of your standard variety Mystery Science nerds trying to get a Stallone-imitating word in edgewise. The only thing that shut those boys up for a while was the junkie in the side of the theater who at first was yelling for them to just watch the movie, but then started thinking he liked their style and decided to say things like “yeah right!” or “fuck you!” or “the Governator!” to the characters or hum dramatic music stings. It was distracting but kind of funny because it threw the nerd buddies off their game, they didn’t really know how to hang with this guy and it quieted them down. But suddenly he jumped up, started flicking his lighter, frantically searching through his backpack, and then left for about 20-30 minutes to engage in activities of which we can only guess. So while he was gone that one row got their ruining-everybody’s-night eye of the tiger back. And honestly some of their jokes were as bad as the junkie’s. It was sad.

I mention this partly so you know that I have no idea what was said in most of the Bruce/Arnold cameo scene and many other parts of the movie. But also I think they’re a good example of this attitude I’m always fighting against that action movies are just some dumb bullshit you slop together and it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad as long as you drink enough beer and there’s enough blood and some chicks to look at. I know there are people who don’t appreciate the art and craft required to make even a great cheesy action movie, but I think of them mostly as non-action fans. I include in this category the guy on Huffington Post who blogged about how the cast just wasn’t very impressive and went on to say that John Cena should’ve been in it instead of Stone Cold although he thought THE CONDEMNED was “actually pretty good”, that Jet Li didn’t belong because he didn’t “break out” until LETHAL WEAPON 4, and that Dolph is at best “an 80s cult figure.” But the truth is there are plenty of people who really do love action movies but don’t respect them in the morning. I can’t say that those obnoxious dickheads in the theater aren’t true fans, because the fact is they enjoyed it more than I did (their review: “THAT WAS AWWWWWESOMMMMME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

They love it but I believe they don’t respect it, because they don’t want to listen to it, they want to laugh at it before it has a chance to do anything wrong, and then they turn around and start whooping at the first smell of napalm, well executed or not. I think they don’t respect it because I heard some of their conversations before the movie about how “it writes itself” and it doesn’t matter what’s on screen because it’s a movie for men, blah blah blah. Just shove it in their mouth, they don’t give a shit what it is.

That’s fine, this is America, that is their lifestyle choice. I just hope I never fucking hear them again and that the junkie guy starts thinking he’s part of their group and showing up at their barbecues asking their wives to loan him money. But I think most of us here are a separate type of action fans. I’m not saying we’re better, because we are all equal children in God’s eyes, etc. But we wouldn’t think it was worth writing and reading about these movies if we didn’t respect their craft, their subtext, their history and tradition, and think those things were worth analyzing. So that’s what we’re gonna do here and that’s who this review is meant for but I hope some of that other group will eventually dig deeper and learn to see the difference between dinner and 7-11 2-for-two-dollars food.

By the way, I wouldn’t read this without seeing the movie. If you like Stallone type movies just see the fuckin thing. There’s no reason to wait for DVD. Do not travel through time and go to the 7:10 show I went to though. You will (did?) regret it.

The plot of the movie is pretty weak. My pals in the theater would say it doesn’t need a plot. I’ll meet them half way because the strengths of the movie do survive the overly simplistic story and lack of build. The ol’ soldiers-go-into-fictional-South-American-country-to-kill-dictator deal is not one of my favorite types of action movies, and instead of finding a new spin on it Stallone barely even goes through the motions of making it a bare bones story. Does anyone even know what Garza was doing other than failing to produce cocaine for the CIA? I guess the good news is that Stallone seems to realize that this is a completely boring villain and puts more emphasis on CIA interloper Eric Roberts and guerilla-trainer/woman-hitter Stone Cold Steve Austin. They don’t get to use the type of charisma they had in THE BUTCHER and DAMAGE, but they make good bad guys.

I also think Stallone has lost track of story structure, or isn’t allowed to use it when working with Millennium Films. This is the same as RAMBO: setup, brief middle part, long action scene. It doesn’t feel like quite enough. It doesn’t set the stakes or up the ante or fake left and go right. It doesn’t feel like quite a complete story.

And it’s minimalistic about these mercenaries. You don’t know much about their methods, their specialties, their lives, or even their names. Jason Statham has a subplot about a girlfriend, but otherwise we don’t see any of their lives outside of their work. Therefore you’d think there’d be some interesting details about how they do it, a sort of soldier of fortune procedural. Nope, not really. It doesn’t even bother much with favorite action cliches like the “Just How Badass Is He?” or the “Putting Together The Team.” I’ve read that Randy Couture plays “Toll Road, demolitions expert,” but in the movie I don’t think they said his name or that he used explosives.

I shouldn’t read scripts, but since I did read an earlier version of this I’ll share what I know. The version I read didn’t feel finished, but it had some plot and character background that was stripped out of the final movie. Church (Bruce) actually lied to them about having a grandson killed, they meet with him more than once before uncovering the truth. In that version Hale Caesar (which I think is still the name of Terry Crews’s character) owned a Mexican restaurant where they met. There was a little more method to what Barney was doing, like he has to recruit a gay Expendable to use to get weapons he needs from a gay arms dealer. He has to meet with old Navy SEAL friends, he has to trick people. I guess they didn’t need the subplot about the two CIA agents following them, and I’m glad Stallone ditched the idea of one young guy on the team, and that he rewrote it for the actors he had (for example having Randy Couture explain his cauliflower ear, which I hope helps him get other roles). But you can see how chipping away at an already simplistic plot starts to leave you with less than a movie.

I’m sure when Bruce was willing to do one scene they figured it was worth cutting out most of what happens with that character, and when Mickey Rourke signed on they took away Caesar’s taco restaurant to make room for Tool’s tattoo shop. The movie’s biggest strength is obviously its awesome cast, but I bet that was what caused most of its weaknesses too. They must’ve had to work around complicated schedules, otherwise I’m sure they would’ve had a bunch of group hero shots with everybody together. They have a great, moody introduction on motorcycles, but who knows if it’s actually them? In fact the movie’s way too light on establishing shots, period. If Bruce, Sly and Arnold really filmed that scene together somebody really fucked up by doing it all in separate closeups.

And speaking of closeups, that’s the problem with alot of the action scenes. It’s not as confusing as the worst post-action, but it’s definitely got some similarities. Stallone knew all the match-ups that had to happen for it to be awesome: Stone Cold vs. Stallone, Stone Cold vs. Couture, Lundgren vs. Li, Li vs. Daniels. All of these fights are pretty cool but none deliver to full potential because they’re shot too close up and cut too quickly. The fact that Stone Cold actually for real broke Stallone’s neck to shoot their fight scene and the scene isn’t very memorable… I mean, that’s a shame. The Lundgren vs. Li fight (choreographed by Corey Yuen I believe) is probly the most satisfying one, but still frustrating because it feels like it has all the elements of a classic fight, taking advantage of their differences in size, but only let you see about 80% of it. Jet Li moves fast, you have to have the camera ready.

Stallone might’ve had some misguided notion that the way to win over younger people who didn’t grow up on his works is to make his look kind of like the bullshit that they’re familiar with. But I don’t think his math checks out. I think the shakycam fakumentary post-action style is a reaction to the type of movies Stallone comes out of. It says “Yes, Matt Damon is a super killing machine, but this is not some phony cartoon like Rambo. This is reality. You can tell it’s gritty because a guy’s having a hard time keeping the camera pointed in the right direction.”

Or maybe it’s just a reaction to THE MATRIX and the movies that came in its wake, which were exaggerated and artificial and used computers and wires to very clearly, in slow motion and from all angles show carefully choreographed and performed movements. We got sick of the MATRIX rip-offs so they gave us the opposite: simple fights that look unplanned and with the camera not set up in time to capture what happened.

I think the way to respond to that is to go the opposite direction, but Stallone’s response is to crash right into it, combine the styles and water them down. Maybe Stallone was worried that the fights were gonna be so awesome that A.B. King would explode, so he had to tone them down by muddling them up. But I think A.B. would’ve been willing to sacrifice himself for the greater cause of awesomeness. I say if you have this much awesomeness you embrace it. And that seems to be the attitude in regards to explosions, bodily mutilation and firepower (which is Hale Caesar’s main character trait). I just wish they would’ve pulled the camera back more and left it on longer, or at least edited the 3 intercut fight scenes a little slower so I’d know what was up and who did that one thing to Gary Daniels.

You know, this really is like an epic version of some of those Millennium DTV movies. They did do some solid DTVs like the UNDISPUTEDs, but are mainly known for sloppier, weirder ones like Seagal’s OUT FOR A KILL. This has a little of that spirit, haphazardly pieced together on the fly, having to say goodbye to making sense in order to film within the budget and schedule. It lacks the sense of place and atmosphere of many ’80s and ’90s greats, or even lesser ones like COBRA.

That’s alot of weaknesses, so how the fuck is this a positive review? Good question, I’m glad I asked that. What happened was what I liked about the movie overcame all that other shit. The main secret is simple: all those guys are in it, and all of them get at least one little scene to shine.

Stallone and Statham are the leads, they have the best action moment together (involving their seaplane, the Expendajet) and a brutal fight against soldiers with well choreographed Statham kicks and Stallone tackles. Couture gets a little bit of a monologue, the best screen fighting he’s been allowed so far, and a nice touch where he’s wearing reading glasses and enjoying a book on the way back from a hostage rescue. Jet gets to be sarcastic, gets a few laughs, and gets to fight Dolph. Dolph goes through a whole character arc in a short amount of time and gets to shit-talk Gary Daniels. Crews gets the biggest laugh in the movie without saying a word. Roberts gets to talk evil, Stone Cold gets to be evil with almost no dialogue. I wanted to see more of everybody but didn’t feel like anybody was wasted. Well, maybe Gary Daniels could’ve had another scene.

What surprised me most is I was watching the movie and all the sudden somebody just picked up the movie and walked away with it. And Stallone said, “Hey you, come back here!” and the guy turned around and it was Mickey Rourke. He plays Tool, tattoo artist and liaison for the Expendables. He’s the retired mercenary sick of all the killing and full of wisdom. And more than that he’s got weird Mickey Rourke-isms that he probly insisted on, including but not limited to smoking a long hobbit style pipe. He has a couple scenes, all great, but one in particular elevates the movie. He has a tearful monologue that just on the page would be pretty standard, but he throws himself into it like he’s still in THE WRESTLER. Or like he’s still trying to get the role in THE WRESTLER. You almost never see emotion like this in an action movie, including good ones. This is up there with Rambo blubbering at the end of FIRST BLOOD or Van Damme’s confession in JCVD. It’s so incredible even the row of assholes was silent for it. But then the junkie came back and said, “dun dun DUUUUNNNN!”

Claudia Puig of USA Today agrees with the crackhead, calling this destined-to-be-legendary-scene “one of the worst scenes” of a “gratuitously savage” movie. Maybe that’s the difference between someone who can enjoy this and someone who can’t. I like the odd, unexpected touches. I like Eric Roberts’s strange hatred of artistic expression, the General’s idea to paint up his soldiers like they’re on the cover of a Tribe Called Quest album, and Stallone’s willingness to “nearly stop the movie cold” with one of the toughest bastards in the movie crying. I like some flavor in a movie like this.

THE EXPENDABLES survives its wounds because the personalities cut through, and that’s what we watch these movies for. That’s why we try to watch every new Dolph Lundgren movie that comes out, even though there’s a high probability of disappointment. Not even including cameos this has a good half dozen guys whose starring vehicles I’m always interested in watching. And while this one doesn’t match the filmatistic greatness of the classics some of them are known for, every one of them does get at least a small chance to shine brighter than they’ve been able to sometimes in bigger roles.

Part of me wishes Stallone had hired another director, someone with a better skill for action scenes (you know I’m gonna say John Hyams or Isaac Florentine). But it’s Stallone’s emotion and earnestness that I like, and the way he lets the actors do what they want. If somebody else had directed it this team might not have the same sense of camaraderie. And I doubt they would’ve gotten that scene out of Mickey Rourke. They might not even have known to leave Dolph inexplicably alive at the end and back to being a good guy. The guy on Huffington Post didn’t know we love Dolph, but Stallone did.

I wish THE EXPENDABLES was a masterpiece, but at least it’s fun. There’s always part 2. I bet he can do it this time. Second time’s the charm, isn’t it? Think GODFATHER PART II in an alternate universe where THE GODFATHER was only pretty good. We can do this, Expendables. We can make this happen. We may be guns-for-hire, but we believe in this.

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Special thanks: you, for skimming this long, meandering review

Jet plays Chen Zhen, a completely fictional character based on the actual historical name of a student of the legendary martial artist Huo Yuanjia.

Chen Zhen starts out the movie in school at Kyoto University, learning about the internal combustible engine. If only he would’ve stayed in school I bet he would’ve started a car industry in China and things would’ve turned out very differently. Unfortunately some Japanese thugs come in and try to expel him for being Chinese. He beats the shit out of them but afterwards a conversation about where he learned to fight like that leads to him finding out that his master is dead and he has to leave Kyoto to go back to the Jingwu School and find out who’s responsible.

When he gets home the school is being run by the Master’s sons, and it has such a bad reputation now that the rickshaw driver tries to bring him to some other school. He was the best student, so everybody’s excited to see him, but it also causes some tension with the sons.

Like in the original the Japanese occupation forces keep fucking with them, sending guys from a karate school to challenge them to duels all the time, tying the hands of the police so nobody can properly investigate why the Master got sick and died. In fact, it’s stubborn Chen who actually exhumes the body, cuts out the liver and has an expert perform a graveside toxicity test.

Since he’s a Fist of Legend instead of a Fist of Fury Jet Li is a little more rational than Bruce was in his version. He does go to the karate school and fight everybody, but he doesn’t sneak out and do it without telling anyone. And either they changed it or translated it better because the sign he gets to break says that his school is closed, not that they are “sick men.” So you don’t have to think this guy is nuts for getting so upset about being called “sick men” on a sign.

He’s also more of a nerd. Bruce looked like a pop star in his white suit. Jet’s clothes and haircut remind me of Pee-wee Herman. He puts his fists up and I worry that his suit is too small and is gonna constrict his movements. And even though he can and does throw down with anybody (usually all at the same time) he has that education and uses this science shit that nobody else understands. He’s like Qui Gonn Jin with his midichlorians. That is a reference to the Star Wars prequels, not sure if you guys have checked those out yet but I think you will like them alot.

Although the Chinese are not sick men, they are sick of being treated like shit by the Japanese. But as soon as Chen hooks up with a Japanese girlfriend he starts getting it from the Chinese side too. In this world everybody decides things with duels, so he actually wins the right to stay at the school with a Japanese wife, but doesn’t want to continue causing a problem so he leaves anyway. That’s a cold move, winning what you want through a duel and then not taking it anyway.

It could be kind of cool to live in a culture where duels and challenges decide everything. I think I would probly challenge alot of other critics to criticism showdowns. My outlaw style is the best. Do you think your blurb style can defeat me? If I beat you you have to stop doing those bullet point reviews where you list “The Good” and “The Bad” and all that shit. If you win I have to start doing set visits.

So they go off to live together and everybody thinks they’re sinners for shacking up together, but neither the Chinese or the Japanese will let them get married, so what are they supposed to do? Fuck those guys.

There are a couple absolutely great Yuen-Woo Ping choreographed fights in this movie. Fights of Legend. Jet’s style is extremely fast, but I don’t think they sped him up. I thought I noticed a wire trick or two, but according to the DVD extras Gordon Chan wanted a realistic style and used no wires and no breakaway balsa wood furniture. So the fights are pretty intense and different from the magic flying kung fu movies everybody else was doing at the time (for example Jet was running around on people’s heads in FONG SAI YUK the year before). But I can’t play along, this is still not realism here. It’s cool partly because of all the farfetched parts: Li falling down into a one-handed pushup, defeating a kick by punching it with his fist of legend, the asshole General defeating his fist of legend by headbutting it. I mean, who headbutts a punch? That’s a move that can’t happen in life, only in a great movie.

Or, you know, that move where you punch at somebody but stop your fist right in front of their face and it causes a gush of air that blows their hair back so they know how legendary that fist would’ve been if it hit them. And then maybe you open the fist and just give ‘em a little slap. I’m betting Jet didn’t use any moves like that when he was actually a competitive fighter.

I like how in kung fu movies everybody has some flour or something on their shirts that flies off when they get hit. Some people get knocked on the ground in this one, so maybe they’re just dirty from rolling around on the floor. That’s how I rationalized it.

There are many great badass moments. One of them is in the scene where he beats up the whole karate school. They’re all pulling themselves up off the floor, they look over and he’s crouched down tying his shoe! That’s gotta be one of the most badass shoe-tyings in all of cinema. Not only does it show a casual fearlessness (like Bruce eating chips while fighting a bunch of guys in THE BIG BOSS), it’s also a huge “fuck you” to put shoes on in their dojo. It’s like “Now that I’ve seen how you fight I really have no qualms about disrespecting you.” This scene is also some badass detective work because he samples their skills and styles to determine that his Master was poisoned since there’s no way these knuckleheads could’ve beat him fair and square.

But my favorite part of the movie is definitely when Chen Zhen and his wife are living out in the middle of nowhere and the Japanese sensei Funakochi Fumio (Yasuaki Kurata) walks in out of the fog like a samurai. He’s actually the wife’s uncle, but Chen Zhen knows he’s there for a challenge. Doesn’t even bring a bottle of wine or anything. This is one of the best types of fight scenes because it’s got great moves and choreography but it’s just as much about the characters, the themes and the emotions. Before the fight they taunt each other about dying. Chen says, “If you are the one who ends up dead I will bring your ashes back to Japan.” I think he means it more as a sign of respect than a threat. Even though this could be a fight to the death Chen seems really uncomfortable about fighting this old man. The look on his face when Fumio yells “WAIT!” and then feebly folds his robe and puts it down on the ground says everything. When he notices Fumio squinting like he can’t see well he feels bad and says, “Are you all right? I won’t take advantage of you.” They both put on blindfolds to make it fair. (This might be a pretty common courtesy though judging by how fast they both whip out the blindfolds.)

When not wearing the blindfold Li has a whole lot of emotions in his eyes. They have a conversation about fighting before and during the duel, and go from bitter contentiousness to admiration and excitement about seeing the martial arts in new ways. Shit, they almost become fight brothers. Fumio is impressed and influenced by Chen’s fighting, and we’re impressed that the Japanese aren’t all evil in this one. Chen thinks he’s lost the duel but Fumio is raving about him, saying excitedly “You’ve broadened my views!” I want to be friends with Fumio.

This is a real dude movie. Not only does it have that type of warrior bonding we love, but it has a woman who tells the hero to go off and kick ass and come back to be a husband later on. She says “There are things in life more important than love” and tells him to go off and “fulfill your promise.” It’s every man’s dream to 1. have kung fu so awesome it’s gonna save the country 2. have a girl that understands sometimes a man with kung fu that awesome needs some time and space to go beat that asshole Japanese general to death and 3. fake his death and go back to his girl wearing a cool hat.

This is such a great story and character that people are always trying to make other movies that tie into it. Li himself actually played the master, Huo Yuanjia, in Ronny Yu’s FEARLESS. Donnie Yen played Chen Zhen in a 30-episode TV show and now he’s doing a sequel called LEGEND OF THE FIST: THE RETURN OF CHEN ZHEN. If anybody wants another idea how to spin off of this I would like to point you in the direction of the scene where Chen Zhen’s wife is freaked out by a mouse, and he tells her the mouse lived there before they did. What I am proposing is an animated version told through the point of view of the mouse, much like THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE.

It’s kind of ridiculous to remake a Bruce Lee movie, because how the fuck are you gonna compete with that? But by making the character different and the story more thoughtful they pulled it off. FIST OF FURY is an awesome movie, but its simplistic anti-Japanese propaganda takes it down a notch. FIST OF LEGEND manages to achieve a similar level of awesomeness without being as stupid. It’s rare that a remake of a famous movie like that is considered a classic in its own right.

But the reputation is deserved. This is a great fucking movie. It was hard going through life as a kung fu fan without having seen FIST OF LEGEND before, but I always knew it would be worth it so that my Countdown to the Expendables could have some classics in it and not just leftovers. I’m glad I held off. Some things are worth the wait.

I’m not talking about abstinence until marriage by the way, FIST OF LEGEND is worth the wait is what I’m trying to say here.

Okay, I should get a couple disclaimers out of the way. First of all, mummies are not one of my favorite monsters. Off the top of my head the only mummy movie I can think of that I like is BUBBA HO-TEP, but that didn’t really need to be a mummy to be good. It just needed to be a slow moving monster so an elderly Elvis could be a fair match for it. If it was about a giant space slug or mutant sloth it could also be good if it had the same characterization of a sad, lonely Elvis Presley. The Universal MUMMY with Boris Karloff is a great monster at the beginning, then he disappears and it’s just Karloff in a fez for the rest of the movie. It’s no DRACULA, I’ll tell you that. And as you can see above I didn’t think the Hammer version was that great either.

As for the MUMMY that started this series, I hated the fuckin thing. I remember it as having no sense of build or rhythm at all, it was all clatter and mayhem and stupidity. In RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK they have scenes where he’s at school teaching, right? But when Stephen Sommers rips off RAIDERS he’s worried that your attention span is too short for a story to develop so in an early scene in a library the love interest character played by Rachel Weiss for no reason at all clutzily destroys the entire library Jar Jar style. I hated his style enough that I decided not to watch Sommers movies anymore, so I skipped out on part 2. I only watch non-Sommers spin-offs such as THE SCORPION KING (which was much more fun).

So when I found out Rob Cohen (DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY, DRAGONHEART, THE FAST DRAGON THE FURIOUS, etc.) was taking over I thought I would go see it. He also makes crappy, stupid movies, but it’s a style of crappy stupid movie that is more watchable for me. It’s kind of like after Arizona finally started celebrating Martin Luther King Day you didn’t have to boycott it anymore, same thing here, without Stephen Sommers I was excited to watch a stupid MUMMY movie with poor Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh in the cast.

But then when it came time to put my money where my mouth was I couldn’t do it, because we actually had a good movie summer. Usually I’d have fun seeing a crappy movie in August (I paid to see Rob Cohen’s STEALTH, for example, and didn’t regret it) but this year I really felt like if I was gonna go to a theater I might as well just see DARK KNIGHT again. It seemed almost unethical to go see something I knew was crap when there was one that good still playing.

But now THE MUMMY TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR A FILM BY ROB COHEN comes to the DVD and I’ll be damned, this is actually a legitimately great adventure movie! Brendan Fraser returns as the globetrotting hero Rick O’Connell, a gun tot– nah, just jerkin your chain, this is a piece of shit, but I kind of enjoyed some of it. Details to follow.

Jet is the wicked emperor who conquered China and built the Great Wall and could shoot fireballs (not sure if this is historically accurate). Michelle is a witch who brought him to a secret place to find spells that would help him defeat his last enemy, Death. Basically the whole trouble in this movie stems from the emperor’s best friend General Ming violating the ancient Bros Before Hoes covenant. The emperor said “Let no man touch her – she is mine” but then General Ming fell in love with her and impregnated her, so the Emperor had him drawn and quartered. Luckily, the witch pulled a Jamie Kennedy style practical joke where she did the wrong spell and instead of giving him eternal life she cursed him and his army to become terra cotta warriors.

Once all that’s explained it skips to the 20th century and we soon come to the sad realization that this movie still stars Brendan Fraser. Now, I feel bad saying this, because the guy seems pretty nice. But I must be honest. I fucking hate Brendan Fraser. How does this guy star in movies? He has all these old timey hardass lines but they don’t sound at all believable coming out of his mouth. He has jokes and he delivers them wrong, so they don’t make sense. He has a son in the movie who looks like he’s at most ten years younger than him. He’s not believable as being that age or as being a father in general, or a war veteran. Basically, every aspect of the character does not fit the actor. I don’t get it. He must have some charisma, people like him, but I don’t see it. To be fair I’m a little color blind, his charisma might be a shade of green that I have trouble with or something.

Did you see the trailer? I did, about ten thousand times. One thing that bugged the shit out of me is when the crazy pilot says “I’d tell you to put your seatbelts on, but I couldn’t afford to get any!” Fraser looks disgusted, laughs sarcastically and then sarcastically says “Why am I laughing?”

It doesn’t make any sense! Clearly Fraser is supposed to be charmed by the crazy pilot and laugh along with him, then realize that his life is in danger and ask himself “Why am I laughing?” But it doesn’t make any sense for the laugh to be sarcastic, or the line, for that matter. What I don’t understand though is how Fraser does the scene wrong, then it ends up in the trailer, and then ends up in the movie. There was plenty of time to fix it. Shit, you should’ve told me you didn’t have time, I would’ve figured out some way to fix it for you just for the betterment of mankind.

The early scenes that introduce Fraser’s character Rick and his wife Evey in retired boredom are extremely painful. It’s the type of “humor” where adults act like annoying little kids and that’s supposed to count as comedy. They also have not one but two “jokes” where music is playing and then it skids to a stop to denote wackiness (I wonder why they didn’t go for the needle scraping off the record routine?)

Making things worse is the fact that Rachel Weiss knew when to call it quits so they replace her with poor Maria Bello, trying her best at an English accent. Bello is a great actress who comes across like an idiot in this moronic horse shit. But hey, let’s consider her paycheck on this one a reward for A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.

Anyway, their dashing adventurer son has skipped out of college to dig up the titular tomb, meanwhile his parents are tricked into delivering some magic crystal deal to the same place and this resurrects the emperor who walks around, then turns into a three headed dragon and flies around, then turns back into a man and never thinks to do the dragon trick again, which in my opinion is very, very poor strategy on his part. His plan is to revive his army at the magic pool of whatever and such and then who knows, all kinds of evil and what not, etc., would potentially, you know. You can imagine. That is what is at stake here. All that kind of stuff.

Luckily Michelle Yeoh is alive. Why is she still alive? I will let her character explain with actual dialogue from the movie:

“I would have died too by his hand, if the yeti had not found me and brought me to this pool.”

Yes, that is correct, that is why this movie is worth watching, because Michelle Yeoh plays a witch who clashed with an evil emperor in ancient China but luckily a yeti found her and brought her to a magic pool so she lived into the post WWII period when the emperor was brought back to life and then she killed him again.

Of course, when she says that line in the movie it’s not a complete surprise, because there was already a part earlier when her daughter (also immortal) is in trouble so she yells a bunch of words and then some CGI yetis show up and help her. You may have heard about the scene where they kick a guy through the air and then celebrate a field goal. What made me happy was that after the battle they stay in the movie and help them up the mountain. It’s like THE WIZARD OF OZ, they just pick up different weird characters along the way and nobody questions it. (Unfortunately after a while the yetis disappear and never come back. But hopefully they will get a spinoff prequel like the Scorpion King.)

Here’s another line of dialogue that made me laugh:

“Hey, mom – sorry I blamed you guys for raising the emperor.”

I wish they would stick to the heartfelt lines, they’re way funnier than the smartass ones. The movie’s pretty fun whenever it’s not trying to be fun.

Like the first MUMMY movie and probaly the second one that I boycotted this one has constant show-offy special effects sequences, some better than others. The yetis, unfortunately, look like video game characters. But I did think the emperor mummy guy was sort of cool. He’s like a video game character also because of the fireballs, but I like how he’s a clunky clay man whose face sometimes breaks to reveal a ZOMBI style rotted face beneath. Since he can grow back the clay parts he actually breaks off a chunk of his head in one scene and throws it as a weapon. I can respect that. Also Michelle Yeoh resurrects all the people who died making the Great Wall and uses them as an army. I thought those guys looked cool although I didn’t understand why some of them still had faces – I was under the impression that the Great Wall had been built quite some time ago. Haven’t checked wikipedia yet though.

Jet Li and his special effects team make a pretty good villain, but you can’t help but think they’re wasting this guy. Of course he gets to fight a little bit, but not as much as he would in pretty much any other movie he’s ever made. Michelle doesn’t do much either, they do have a short sword fight where she spins around a couple times. But really this is all lead-up to the showdown movie fans have been begging for for years: ladies and gentlemen, the long awaited duel between Jet Li, 15 time gold medal winning champion of Beijing Wushu Team, and the legendary Brendan Fraser, of MONKEY BONE and MRS. WINTERBOURNE. Li started out fighting in the Fanzi Eagle Claw style, Fraser I believe started out in ENCINO MAN.

This brings up an interesting question. Not just “how am I supposed to believe Brendan Fraser defeating Jet Li in hand-to-hand combat?” but “how am I supposed to root for Brendan Fraser against Jet Li?” They try every trick in the book, including making Jet completely fucking evil, putting Michelle Yeoh on the Fraser team, even giving him yetis. Still it takes effort to side with him. Maybe they should’ve made it a tie.

Now that I’ve seen the movie I will not stand for any of that “ironically the INDIANA JONES ripoff was better than the INDIANA JONES sequel” business. I understand there are harsh feelings because you didn’t get what you wanted out of that one, but if you’re gonna claim this garbage is better you’re clearly too emotional to make a serious argument. But that’s okay, maybe this stupid movie will cheer you up. For those who get a kick out of watching the stupidest shit Hollywood can waste money on, this one gives way more bang for your buck than a 10,000 BC, and the pacing is not quite as pan-banging-against-your-head as part 1. So I didn’t regret it. On the other hand, DARK KNIGHT is on DVD. I could’ve been watching that.

Or volunteering at a food bank. I’m sorry, everybody.

[ratings]

Instead, the hook they’re going for with JET LI’S FEARLESS is “Jet Li in his final martial arts epic.” This claim is not really a true story either, or at least it’s up to interpretation. If you read interviews with Mr. Li, he is saying that he considers this his final statement on wushu, so he does not plan to do more movies about wushu. But he will do action movies with martial arts in them and he hasn’t even ruled out historical epics with martial arts. Just not movies specifically about him being a martial artist.

Will he even stand by that promise? Most people don’t seem to think so, but I am willing to take his word for it. Jet Li is made of different mettle than most of us. The dude survived a Tsunami. This is a guy who promised his wife if she got pregnant he would stop doing movies for the entire pregnancy and spend that time with her. Not only did he keep that promise, he dropped out of a little movie called CHOW YUN FAT’S CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON in order to do it. So there is reason to believe he means what he says.

Of course, nobody is gonna complain if he does another one, unless it’s terrible. But if this is the last one I think it’s a good one to end it on, and I’ll explain why. That’s what I do.

I don’t think there’s a huge buzz on this movie, and I’m not surprised. The fights (choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping) are great, very traditional, lots of weapons (including the guaranteed Vern-pleaser the 3-section staff) no flying or magic powers. Most of the fights are competitive, on a platform or in a ring, although there’s one in a restaurant that gets totally destroyed. I think these are very good fights but in the spirit of honesty I must say that these are not amazing, knock you on your ass fights that are trying to one-up everything that’s come before it. It’s not like that scene in TONY JAA’S TOM YUM GOONG THE PROTECTOR where there is a continuous 4 minute tracking shot as Tony Jaa goes up stairs fighting dozens of guys, and you feel like this has actually advanced the fight scene to a new level never attempted before. It would be fun if Jet wanted to make a movie saying, “Oh yeah Tony, that’s what you got? 4-minutes of elbows and throwing dudes over ledges? I see your 4-minutes and raise you 3. Let me show you how the fucking GROWN-UPS do it!” That would be fun but that’s not what Jet is up to here. It’s a more low key type of fight where you admire the grace of the fighting and the choreography and that’s about it.

And while Ronny Yu has created a very pretty and gentle historical feel, this doesn’t have the jawdropping cinematism of JET LI’S HERO, the awe-inspiring imagery and stunning beauty that might equal CROUCHING TIGER type crossover appeal. That is another thing I like in movies, but this isn’t that type of movie.

What it is, the thing that is great about it, is the story. The movie opens with a huge fight expo where Jet is taking on a bunch of different assholes representing England, colonialism, and the white man. It’s an unfair fight because he has to take on all of these guys one after the other, but he feels it is important for the pride of all of China. We see him win all of the fights except one, he still has to fight a Japanese guy named Tanaka. But then it skips back to his childhood.

(One thing I don’t understand about these movies. How the HELL do they get their braids so long? Okay with adults I can understand, they’ve kept it going for years. But even the little kids have braids down to their asses. They didn’t have weaves back then, did they? I wonder what their secret is.)

The scenes with him as a kid are cute, especially since he’s a little brat who can’t fight and gets his ass kicked. His father is a great fighter though, and he sneaks out to watch him compete. But he’s completely shocked and humiliated when his father stops himself from making what could be a lethal blow, and loses the match. What the fuck, dad? I want to see winning! I want to see asskicking! Kill that bitch! So he vows that he will become a great fighter and, unlike dad, will be undefeated. At that age he doesn’t understand what the fuck his dad is doing, but by the end of the movie he will get it.

Instead of another story about a guy getting revenge for the death of somebody (as great as those stories are) this one is kind of the opposite. Adult Jet, after becoming a great, undefeated competitive fighter, becomes an egomaniac who chooses his disciples based on if they can drink well. They dress all in black (like Johnny Cash, not like goths) and go drinking after every fight, as well as after anything other than a fight. They are almost more of a fraternity than a clan.

But Jet one day finds himself fighting another master for what appear to be honorable reasons, and he kills the guy. In alot of martial arts movies it would be cool that he killed him, but in this one Jet is so upset by what he did that it makes him puke. And when he finds out that he’s been misled by his drunken kung fu fraternity, and the guy REALLY didn’t deserve to die, he is pretty pissed off. Now he’s not really a martial arts hero. HE is the guy who killed your master. So he can hardly go for revenge.

Instead it’s him that gets avenged. The godson of the dude he killed goes to his place, kills his daughter and his mom. Not cool. So he storms over to the godson’s place. This guy has innocent female relatives as well. This is a perfect opportunity to keep the cycle of violence rolling. He almost does it but, like his father did all those years ago, pulls his punch.

Then he basically turns into Gary Sinise after Vietnam in TOM HANKS’S FORREST GUMP. He leaves town, stumbles around drunk and depressed, grows his hair back, ends up washed up in a river somewhere. He gives up on life. Eventually some people in a nice farming community help him out, try to cheer him up, and give him the nickname Ox. There is a nice blind lady named Moon who he falls in love with. He not only learns useful skills like how to plant crops, he learns to take a moment to just stand and breathe in the breeze and appreciate nature’s beauty and shit. Like the Hulk in ERIC BANA’S HULK contemplating the lichen in the desert.

Eventually, of course, he decides to go back to fighting to help Chinese people be proud in the face of continued colonialism from the west. But he brings with him a new understanding of wushu, that it is a way to improve yourself and to bring people together, not to beat each other’s asses and prove how awesome you are.

Jet Li has been trying for a while now to make a movie that represents his Buddhist beliefs and his philosophy of the meaning of martial arts. Even that crappy movie JET LI’S THE ONE he was talking about how he worked some of his Buddhist beliefs into the plot. JET LI’S HERO has kind of a non-violent message, and of course JET LI’S DANNY THE DOG aka JET LI’S UNLEASHED is even moreso. That’s the one where he’s raised as an attack dog and trained to go ape shit on everybody if his collar comes off. But then he gets away from his master and meets normal nice people, and has to learn how to not go ape shit anymore. I enjoyed the movie but it has a pretty huge weakness in the premise. As an audience, we sympathize with Danny the Dog and want him to achieve his goal of non-violence. But as Jet Li fans we also want to see him fight, especially in this more savage style he and Yuen Woo Ping created for this character. So it’s working against itself.

JET LI’S FEARLESS solves that problem because it’s not about street fights or forced competitions to the death. It’s about exhibitions, and about a character who tries to discourage competitions to the death. If it’s not to the death it’s fine, he can still do it without contradicting his values. This way he is able to achieve both his own goal (not kill somebody) and the audience’s goal (see Jet Li kick ass). Everybody wins.

One of the most memorable fights is against Hercules O’Brien, played by Nathan Jones. That is the almost 7 foot tall bald muscleman I was raving about from THE PROTECTOR. I hope he has an even bigger role in that WWE movie he’s doing. Somebody cast this guy as the president or something.

To me, JET LI’S FEARLESS achieves one of the best things you can do: make a movie about fighting where you somehow trick the audience into being emotionally invested in the story and not caring as much about the fights as what happens to the characters. I recently caught up with JET LI’S ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA. This one is very similar. Both are based on tall tale versions of famous Chinese historical figures. Both have a more westernized, non-fighting friend who handles business. Both have fuck up disciples who need to be kept in line. And both movies are very much about preserving Chinese culture and pride during a historical period of westernization. ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA is more impressive on a technical level and probaly has more fighting. But personally I was more moved emotionally by FEARLESS. It feels like a more focused and sincere message from Jet Li to the world. So thank you Jet Li, and congratulations on your retirement.

VERN’S NOTES:

1. The real Yuanjia really did those competitions, really was poisoned, really fought a guy named Tanaka, and really was considered the winner despite a technical loss because he had stopped himself from making a fatal blow. There really was a Hercules O’Brien, but he actually never fought Yuanjia because he left the country before the match was scheduled to take place! Pussy.

2. I was confused by that ending though, it seemed like he died from the poison and his spirit was with Moon, but then the text made it clear that he didn’t die until later.

3. I hope Ronny Yu keeps making ridiculous BRIDE OF CHUCKY type American movies, but it’s good to see he can still make ‘em classy. It’s been, what, eleven years? Finally he went back to Cantonese language epics and showed he still had the juice, despite being fired from SNAKES ON A PLANE. Basically, he went back to the old neighborhood and cleaned up the streets. Congratulations Ronny.

[ratings]

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This is just your typical martial arts vehicle where the star (in this case Jet Li) has been raised like an animal in a cage and wears a collar and he’s trained by Bob Hoskins so that when the collar comes off he goes ape shit and beats the holy living fuck out of people that owe Bob Hoskins money. But then obviously he meets a blind piano tuner played by a respected Oscar winning actor (in this case Morgan Freeman) who teaches him about music and then the piano tuner’s stepdaughter teaches him to eat ice cream and then she gets her braces taken off so he becomes non-violent and refuses to fight in high stakes death matches.

Actually come to think of it this is not a typical martial arts movie at all, it’s pretty fuckin weird and that’s what I liked about it. Despite HERO I’m still pretty skeptical of new Jet Li movies, especially when he’s speaking the english type language. This is a good not great movie, but it’s a great move for Mr. Li because he plays a distinct character, he really gets to act, he fights in a different style and he even gets to put a sincere anti-violence message in there.

Like I said the title is DANNY THE DOG in Europe. That sounds better, but they thought people here would think it was like SOCCER DOG or something. Which come to think of it is not that far off. In those movies they got a dog who plays some sport like volleyball or football or whatever. Ain’t no rule says a dog can’t play basketball. Here, he’s a dog who does ultimate fighting. Only the gimmick is, he’s a dude. But also a dog. Anyway I’m getting off track here, the point is I don’t like the title UNLEASHED because in the movie, he never once has a leash. He’s uncollared but not unleashed. It’s just not accurate. At least it’s better than SAVED BY THE MUSIC which seriously is the title that Jet Li says him and Luc Besson wanted.

The director is some dude who did THE TRANSPORTER which is not a good movie at all. There was one part where some guys were fighting on the ground sliding around in a bunch of spilled oil, that was pretty cool. Otherwise though it’s that forced kind of “cool hitman” bullshit where a guy is supposed to be a good character because he wears a black and white outfit and never shuts his god damn yap about hitman professionalism. Come to think of it I hated that fuckin movie.

The script here is by that frenchman Luc “50/50″ Besson who I have just now nicknamed after the probability of one of his movies being a hit or a miss. I gotta give him credit for writing a story much more interesting than that Transporter bullshit, even if it’s more ridiculous. As for the director, the filmatism is decent. At first I was worried because there was alot of that disorienting handheld and closeup and quick cut type garbage. The style that used to be for a scene where the main character is really drunk or high, now it’s used for a whole movie because of legends in some cultures that it looks cool. But a little bit in I was relieved to realize this type of shooting actually had a purpose, showing the confusion of Jet Li’s character Danny. When we first meet him he’s so out of it he gets a big bloody cut on his head and doesn’t know to plug it up. They give him some bandage and he uses it to fix his broken punching bag. As he begins to understand the world more the camera calms down and starts acting like a responsible adult camera like they got in good movies instead of some spastic retard camera like they got in the Michael Bay movies.

Man I really gotta lay off the retards in my reviews, I know, but here it’s actually relevant because Jet is playing sort of a retard. Unfortunately he’s not gonna get an oscar because the whole point is that he’s a retard who’s a genius at fighting, but he tries to stop fighting. You get an oscar for playing a retard who proves he’s a genius at something, but not for playing a retard who wants to stop being such a genius. For example if the good will hunting movie or beautiful mind was about how the guy decides that math is for suckers, they would not have got those oscars.

Really what this is is Jet Li’s EDWARD SCISSORHANDS meets WHITE DOG. What happens when a fighting dog in a human body comes to live at your house? And will he kill anybody? He doesn’t talk much, doesn’t understand much, is very timid and awkward but trying to fit in. And a real sweetheart. But capable of killing a fucker with two punches to the face. But that’s just the way he was raised. I love the way he wobbles into a fight with his shoulders hunched and his head down. He gets shy at the grocery store and hides behind Morgan Freeman like a little kid. The fight choreographing is by Yuen Woo Ping but it’s not the elegant CROUCHING TIGER style. He fights like an animal, yelling constantly, just jumping on a guy and PUNCHPUNCHPUNCHPUNCHPUNCH until the jaw is in seven and a half pieces. He even bites.

Danny’s relationship with the stepdaughter kind of threw me off at first. It’s pretty much a sister-brother relationship but you don’t know that at first. And for a minute I thought they had an older actress wearing braces and talking in a squeaky voice to seem younger. Like maybe they were gonna skip forward ten years. Then I realized I figured her age wrong, and I wasn’t sure what to think. He’s too old for her physically but too young for her mentally. Does that balance things out? I know Besson is a perv but I don’t know which one is the Jean Reno in this situation and which one is the Natalie Portman. In other words I don’t know which is the Luc Besson and which is the Milla Jovovich.

You know what I hate is when american Writers are talking about british people in movies so they refer to them as “blokes.” Or they start using british terms like “shite” or “bollocks.” Come on asshole, just a minute ago you were american, all the sudden you’re talking about Bob Hoskins I’m suppose to believe you’re wearing a kilt or something. I solemnly swear to never pull that kind of bullshit on you my dear readers and friends. Anyway, Bob Hoskins is a pretty decent villain. A little bit over the top. To be honest I usually think of him as the dude from Roger Rabbit so it’s hard to think of him as a nasty fucker like this. I guess he melted Christopher Lloyd pretty bad in that one so it’s true, you don’t want to fuck with Bob Hoskins.

This is a movie with more class than a CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE or something like that. But one thing that’s a little on the cheesy side is some of the guys Danny fights. There are some real Rumble in the Bronxers in here. I never been to england which I think is where this takes place but I bet they don’t really have a bunch of punk rock martial artists there. That’s my guess but maybe I better ask some of the “blokes” to verify that.

The main weakness of the movie is that after such a great premise there is really only one direction to go, or at least they choose to go in the obvious direction. I was real involved in the beginning but the ending kind of felt more like the solution to a math problem than a thrilling conclusion to an involving story.

Still, I thought it was a good one, mainly for the great performance and fighting by Jet Li. If he’s gonna keep doing english language movies he might want to stick with the french.

A NOTE TO RZA: I don’t want to be an asshole or anything but I just want to be sure you know you can’t coast on your Outlaw Award forever. I mean you did a pretty good job on the two songs you did for the end credits, but does that mean you should get your name in giant letters on the poster and at the very beginning of the movie? BLADE PART 3 had pretty good music too but I had a feeling it was more that orchestra guy than it was you. And KILL BILL had a perfect score but wasn’t it just a bunch of clips from other movies and not an actual composition by you? I mean you know me Rizza, I wouldn’t give a shit except that GHOST DOG IS THE BEST GOD DAMN SCORE OF THE PAST TEN YEARS. Nobody else ever did a score like that. You need to quit teasing us and give us another full on Rizza powered score. thanks for not taking this the wrong way rza. Power and equality bud.

[ratings]

More than any other karate picture I have ever seen, this is a sad, sad movie. I mean it will grab you by the nuts and pull your heartstrings. You see, this little boy who is a junior martial arts champion idolizes his father, Jet Li, but he hardly ever sees him. Jet is a caring father and has fun with the boy when he sees him, but he’s still a fuck up. He is off getting in spectacular kicking fights and he is always late. He is late for the martial arts tournament, and then after he gets there he gets in a big fight with some criminals. The boy intervenes and gets declared a hero. But then Jet doesn’t even make it on time to see him get a plaque presented for his heroism. But still, the boy forgives him right away. Because to him at this age he will always be dad, the hero. He can be hurt by what dad does but he won’t realize that his dad is a fuck up.

Isn’t that the way it really is? At that age you always want to think the best of your dad. You only see that cool side of him when he is actually good to you. The time he is gone, or the time he is drunk, you are willing to write off. Nah, that was just the alcohol. He’s really a cool guy, once every two months.

Well the reason Jet is always gone and so secretive, it turns out he is an undercover cop. Even though his wife is sick and dying, it turns out he’s gonna have to leave the mainland for Hong Kong to infiltrate a gang. In order to do this he has to get arrested and then break out of prison, and also kill two dogs! Well needless to say, although word does not spread about the poor dogs, the neighborhood starts spreading some gossip about this boy’s dad being a wanted criminal, or outlaw. There is even a scene where the bullies pick on the boy and his friend Fatty, and they are spelling out words with a bunch of ants. Maybe that is some cultural type thing, I don’t know WHAT the fuck is up with the ants. But it is sad anyway.

Well the mother dies while Jet is gone and here is this poor kid all alone, so what he does, he goes to Hong Kong and tries to track down his dad, who is undercover in this gang of weapons dealer type individuals. It’s hard to explain but it ends up in a situation where Jet has to stand by as the gang he is undercover with beats up his son. And then he pretends to strangle him.

Well shit, this type of karate picture really makes you think about the way we treat each other. Because in this movie, we can see that Jet really cares about his son. But at the same time, WHY THE FUCK doesn’t he do what’s right for him? How can he stand to watch these motherfuckers throw the kid through a table? And then pretend that he’s strangling him and throw the body out with the garbage? Maybe you could argue that it was the only way to save the kid’s life. But then why did he have to be late to all the karate tournaments? And why did he HAVE to take this undercover job, even though wife was DYING? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU JET LI!? YOU ARE AN EXCELLENT, EVEN SUPERB FIGHTER, HOWEVER I DO NOT AGREE WITH THE WAY YOU TREAT YOUR FAMILY. ASSHOLE.

I think everybody has something that is important to them. For me, it is Writing about Cinema. For you, maybe it is also Writing about Cinema, or painting, or what not. For pretty much all male leads in movies or hour long tv series, it is being a cop or doctor. I think this movie shows better than most the true damage of neglecting your family in favor of being a cop or doctor, because it is shown through the point of view of the little boy. The poor, poor little boy. I can’t remember the character’s name, but if I had to name him, I would name him Little Vern.

Fortunately, the Cinema has what I like to call “the movie magic.” More often than not things end up the way they ought to instead of the way they really would. Sometimes this type of fantasy ruins a movie, but in this case I think it is the proper way to go. It is like in the old Disney picture, The Parent Trap. In that movie, the kids are able to pull a con which proves to the parents they are still in love and stops the divorce. Maybe this is giving unrealistic hopes to the children of America, or maybe it is giving them the comfort they need in the fantasy world of the movie magic.

Well My Father Is a Hero may be giving unrealistic hopes to young chinese martial arts champions whose fathers are neglectful undercover cops, however I think it is something that gives a smile to our hearts and warms us all, and that ain’t a bad thing in my opinion. Because after so much sadness, death, neglect and separation, the climax of the film reunites father and son to fight together against the bad guys. The guys like me and my dad, who just didn’t give a fuck. And what does every boy dream of if not doing karate with his dad and beating up the bad guys. There is even a part where Jet ties Little Vern to a rope and swings him around so he can kick people. This, my friends, is what Cinema is ABOUT. It is the fucking HEART of Cinema. A truly spectacular fighting sequence which at the same time satisfies the emotional needs of the characters by 1) allowing Jet to reveal his secret life to his son 2) allowing Little Vern to understand that his father really is a hero, as he had always hoped and 3) having a little quality asskicking time for father and son.

Bravisimo! Or whatever.

The very end is pretty corny but this really is a great picture and I’m afraid to say it but the bitch really bowled me over. This one really got to me guys and it’s not a pretty sight. I will definitely have alot to think about as far as my past and the way it affects me today, the way I handle my relationships etc. I will try to get back to you in this week’s column but if the column comes late or doesn’t come at all, don’t worry about me folks. I am just changing, just learning, just growing. I am doing what it takes to be a true human being and positive individual. And I will be back soon for sure you can count on it guys. thanks guys I never told you this but I love you all I really, really do.

[ratings]

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This movie has been making the rounds for years. It got nominated for the foreign film oscar, and it played the seattle international film festival, and it’s been on DVD in Asia forever which is no problem for a worldly dude like me, I’ve been free of the region code shackles for years. Region 2, region 3, bring it on motherfuckers, I go all the way up to region 4, region 5 on a good day. I could do region 10 if they threw it at me, region 11, I don’t give a fuck. Anything. But here in region 1 Miramax was supposed to release HERO in theaters. What they wanted to do was leave it on the shelf for years and finally put it out when there’s less interest. That worked so well with SHAOLIN SOCCER. Unfortunately HERO was sitting on the shelf but then it fell off the shelf and got stuck behind the desk and nobody knew it was there. Then I think Tarantino dropped a pencil back there or something, so he reached back there and he felt HERO. So he pulled it out and dusted it off and he was like, “You guys still have this? You should, like, release it in theaters, where people go to watch movies projected on a screen.”

That was a few weeks ago and it turned out Tarantino was right, people wanted to see this movie and it’s been doing very well. No thanks to me. I kept not seeing it and not seeing it.

In a way it kind of shows how cool I am, here is this great movie that everybody loves and I’m like, yeah, I know, masterpiece. I’ll see it later. I gotta watch FRANKENFISH. I knew it was there but I left it unseen, I wanted to save it for later. Who knows when you’re gonna need to see HERO for the first time. Well yesterday I finally figured the time was right, we had come to the point in our relationship where we should take it to that next level, sit down together in a theater and make visual contact.

And shit, not that I flinched or anything but MAN what a great fuckin movie. Jet Li plays the HERO of the title, a man with no name who has just killed the 3 deadliest assassins in China. As his reward, he gets to sit within 100 paces of the king. And what he does, he tells the story of how he killed those assassins. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, and you figure out pretty quick that the other duels were a way to get him into the palace so he himself could assassinate this bastard. Because of what he did to his people, etc.

This is one of my favorite have-your-cake-but-also-eat-the-cake type of movies where it’s all about super badass violence but ultimately is literally about laying down your sword. So you get the satisfaction of standing up against violence but the enjoyment of watching lots of violence first.

I don’t know if anybody’s reading modern politics into this story. There are some definite parallels, but I think it would be giving Bush too much credit to compare him to this king who thinks he can create peace by unifying China – i.e. slaughtering thousands to conquer all the bordering countries (and he doesn’t want to stop there). The big difference between this guy and Bush is that this guy’s plan works, and his wars even go well. Anyway, it’s some interesting political themes, whether you choose to apply it to current events or not.

The fight scenes in this movie are some of the best I’ve ever seen. They use the wires but not the way so many other people use them these days. They just use them for otherworldly effects like leaning over farther than gravity allows or running across water. But most of this is sword fights, and they are swinging those swords so fast and hard you’d think somebody would’ve lost a few fingers during the filming. Probaly not though otherwise I’m sure we would’ve heard something in the news about Jet Li’s fingers going up on e-bay or something.

So it’s a good epic chinese history/mythology type story with classic fight scenes, but then the acclaimed-director-who-let’s-face-it-I-am-not-at-all-familiar-with takes it to the next level with an incredible use of color and sound. It’s all about the huge spectacle (armies of thousands holding up bright red banners, shooting a thousand arrows all at once) and the tiny details (splitting a single hair during a sword fight). It’s about sounds, like 300 wooden paintbrushes pinging as they’re dumped on the floor, or 70 candle flames fluttering at the same gust of wind. It’s about using a sword to deflect an avalanche of arrows, or to slice through droplets of water mid-air.

Also for the ladies, there is one part where it shows Jet Li’s ass.

So yes, this is a real classy and well crafted kung fu epic. The only movie anybody would compare it to is CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. It’s shorter and less complicated but in some ways even more awe inspiring. I would like to thank Miramax for finally doing the right thing and releasing the fucking thing. Yeah, they put Tarantino’s name on the ads, but at least not on the movie itself. And they didn’t add any DMX songs to the soundtrack. I mean I gotta be honest, I’m surprised they didn’t look into adding a few reaction shots from Tom Arnold and Anthony Anderson and calling it CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE: THE BEGINNING.

I don’t want to sound naive, but it’s amazing to me that Jet Li can do a movie like this and then just go back to America and do CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE. You’d think he’d want to stay in Hong Kong and count his blessings. Who wants to be in a cage swingin a midget around while DMX is riding a four wheeler across the rooftops being chased by the cops and professional motocross racers in their full uniforms? I mean seriously, who needs that kind of stress? Not Jet Li.

And what about Ching Tsiu-Tung? He’s choreographing these incredible swordfights, the very next year he’s doing BELLY OF THE BEAST, he’s got Steven Seagal standing in one place punching his opponents when they swing close enough to him. Like fucking tether ball.

I’m not stupid, I know why they do it is they do it for the money. But you don’t just roll over for injustice like this. This just plain should not be happening, period. Your mom shouldn’t have to sell her ass to put food in your mouth, and these guys shouldn’t have to work with Tom Arnold after making a movie like this. Just think about it. Kurosawa didn’t have to come to the US and do a couple PORKY’S sequels to keep his career going, did he? The world doesn’t have to be this way. I see a better tomorrow. Lay your sword down, Jet Li, and take off your sunglasses. You are no longer the property of Hollywood. Fly away Jet Li. We love you, so we set you free.

[ratings]

Joel Silver originally announced this as Untitled DMX Project, supposedly a remake of Fritz Lang’s M. If that was the case, then I guess Tom Arnold (our generation’s Peter Lorre) would’ve been playing a perverted child killer whose killing spree had caused the police to clamp down so hard that organized crime would be pretty much put out of business. So the leaders of rival gangs (DMX, Jet Li, Mark Dacascos) would pool their resources to catch Tom Arnold so everything could go back to normal.

I knew Silver was trying to put one over on us though ’cause I remembered when Romeo Must Die was supposed to be a “hip hop/kung fu adaptation of Romeo and Juliet” and when Exit Wounds was supposed to be an adaptation of John Westermann’s novel Exit Wounds. It’s all hype. When people hear something like “they’re doing a remake of M starring DMX,” they get riled up, and this guarantees that they will later see the movie when it comes out as Cradle 2 the Grave and turns out to be about diamond thieves who steal diamonds that are actually magic plutonium weapons and their daughter gets kidnapped so they have to team up with a Taiwanese intelligence agent to do various stunts and kung fu to save the daughter.

(?)

No, I guess actually come to think of it I’m not sure what they were thinking comparing this to a movie it has no relation to in any way. Or calling it Cradle 2 the Grave, which only relates to the plot in the same way that “Grape Nuts” describes that nasty cereal that doesn’t have grapes or nuts in it at all. But these guys are professionals, they must know what they’re doing.

If not, I’ll tell them what they’re doing. The approach to these movies is this: we don’t have a good story or characters, but we know what audiences want. They want Jet Li. They want DMX, on the screen and on the soundtrack. They want the end credits from Exit Wounds. They want a bunch of fire. Going off jumps. Stuff crashing. There should be high tech equipment. Ultimate fighting. Motocross. A hot chick stripping to her underwear (but no further. This is America, fer crying out loud).

Some of these elements do in fact work. DMX rarely appears in a halfway decent movie, so he has a lot of practice at being better than the movie. He is as magnetic and charming as usual, and this time he doesn’t believe in guns and just wants to save his daughter so he can hug her and talk about angels. Jet Li does a lot of good kicking and jumping around and climbing down buildings and shit. But I’m not sure I like the way the Americans always doll him up, giving him spikey hair and sunglasses, trying to make him look that kind of cool. Jet Li is kind of a timeless figure. When you try to hip him up and dress him in all black (but not a kung fu tunic) you emphasize that he’s this little babyfaced dude with a squeaky voice. He seems like he’s trying to overcompensate for something, which is ridiculous. Jet Li doesn’t need to compensate at all.

The screenwriters are in fact overcompensating though, figuring if they can pile enough complications onto the storyline then everybody will get confused and forget how dumb the movie is. At one point in the movie, Jet Li is in a cage, swinging an angry bald kung fu midget at 20 kickboxers and Ultimate Fighting Champions, while Tom Arnold scans the crowd trying to find a particular guy wearing a particular ring, and this keeps cutting to Anthony Anderson and friends trying to get a limo to a particular parking garage in Chinatown so they can meet up with DMX, who is driving an ATV/quadracer/4-wheeler/whatever you call those god damned things across rooftops, being chased not only by police but by the angry professional motocross racers who he stole the thing from. And meanwhile DMX’s daughter is taped up in a motorhome inside a building where “international scumbags” will later meet to see a demonstration of the new powerful artificial plutonium weapons, and until then she is watching her dad get chased on TV.

And that pretty much sums up what this god damn movie is like. Except I want to say one other thing. At the end, Jet Li takes some kind of atomic weapon and shoves it down Mark Dacascos’s throat, forcing him to swallow it. There are then shots from inside his throat. And on the outside, he starts to glow from his neck, mouth and eyes, and his face melts like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I just want to say, that was really dangerous Jet Li, you should probaly go see your doctor, you don’t know what kind of effect that could have on you being right next to that shit. It’s unhealthy.

Honestly, this movie was more entertaining than some less retarded but equally unimaginative action movies. But it’s still a low down shame to think how much effort goes into an enterprise like this. Why not take all that elbow grease, bottle it up, and save it for a real movie? I know DMX is ready for one. Or if you can’t handle that, you could probaly take this budget and make 7-10 really hilarious straight to video Seagal movies.

[ratings]