1. Sylvester Stallone has met with Walter Hill to possibly direct his movie HEADSHOT.

Stallone is doing this movie that was gonna be directed by Wayne Kramer (RUNNING SCARED) but they had creative differences and broke up but are still friends. Now Deadline is reporting that good ol’ Walter Hill is one of the directors Stallone has met with as a possible rebound.

Honestly I don’t have high hopes for the movie. Nice title and everything, but apparently the disagreement was over Stallone wanting it to be more of a comedy than Kramer did, and I don’t really trust Stallone’s ear for comedy and laffs. Still, this is an exciting story because a) maybe Walter Hill could make something out of it and b) this could be a good sign for the type of directors he might look at for EXPENDABLES 2. I didn’t put Hill on my list because I read somewhere that he gets so much money from the ALIEN movies that he only works when he really wants to. But I know alot of you guys had him on your lists. If he’s meeting with guys like that for the one movie I’m sure the subject of the other one comes up too.

2. Holy shit, Schwarzenegger might do a movie with the director of BITTERSWEET LIFE.

While Entertainment Weekly has made a big story about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first post-governorship project (a Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos style piece of garbage cartoon for little kids):

the real story is that he’s at least considering the English language debut by Kim Ji-Woon, according to slashfilm’s sources anyway. Liam Neeson was set to star at one point, he left, and this other guy happened to be available.

If Schwarzenegger was just gonna continue in the vein of his last couple movies I wouldn’t be too excited about it. We don’t need more COLLATERAL DAMAGEs. But I’ve seen quotes from him about wanting to follow Clint’s model and do movies that take advantage of his age instead of try to ignore it. Working with a great director like this would be very promising, and both parties could benefit. I mean if he’s gonna direct a movie in the English language he might as well get a lead he wouldn’t be able to find an equivalent of back at home.

I bet you Arnold ends up in AVATAR 2, too.

3. There’s a trailer for WARRIOR now.

It looks like a completely generic feel-good sports movie except it happens to be about mixed-martial arts and have an incredible set of leads: Tom Hardy (BRONSON) and Joel Edgerton (ANIMAL KINGDOM) as estranged brothers, Nick Nolte as their dad/trainer. The stunt coordinator is J.J. Perry (BLOOD AND BONE, UNDISPUTED II). I guess this movie was the reason he didn’t do UNDISPUTED III.

4. MORTAL KOMBAT: LEGACY: APOCALYPSE: THE RISE OF MORTAL KOMBAT’S REVENGE coming April 12th.

That unofficial MORTAL KOMBAT movie starring Michael Jai White has led to an official series of webisodes or netlings or whatever it’s called. Same director, same cast, not sure if the fight choreographer is still Larnell Stovall. It starts April 12 and here’s a clip, a little cheesier than the other one in my opinion but hey, it’s free. I’m not gonna be a bitch about it. Maybe it’ll be fun.

5. KNIGHTRIDERS now old enough to wear a fannypack

Josh N. reminded me that this Sunday is the 30th anniversary of the release of one of my favorite movies, George Romero’s KNIGHTRIDERS. He’s gonna visit one of the shooting locations. Those of us who don’t live around there can celebrate by watching the movie while jousting on actual motorcycles.

In sort-of-related news I purchased a book called 101 Action Movies You Must See Before You Die mainly because I flipped through it and noticed that it had KNIGHTRIDERS in there. I’ll have a review of that eventually.

6. The second annual ACTIONFEST is going on right now in Asheville, North Carolina.

If I was there the movie I’d be most excited to see would be NEVER BACK DOWN 2, directed by and starring Michael Jai White. It sounds like the connection to part 1 (which was a cheesy teen movie version of the underground fight tournament subgenre) is that it involves the same fictional tournament, “The Beatdown.” I’m hoping it will be this generation’s UNDISPUTED II.

They also have MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED! (documentary on exploitation movies of the Phillipines by the director of NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD), that crazy looking movie BUNRAKU, an MMA documentary called FIGHTVILLE, Takeshi Kitano’s new gangster movie OUTRAGE, Takashi Miike’s 13 ASSASSINS, (which I’m hearing nothing but raves for so far – I guess you can watch it on demand and in theaters soon), and some other stuff. I rented a couple of the older movies they’re showing so I might have a couple tie-in reviews.

We got Mouth, FTopel, Rook and maybe others on the scene there. Hopefully they’ll keep us updated in the comments here.

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

Also there is arm wrestling.

I always wondered how the fuck Sylvester Stallone made a whole movie about arm wrestling. Boxing – of course that works, there’s so much training and politics and the fights can go on for a long time if they’re well matched. And I haven’t seen DRIVEN yet, but I can see how he could do one about being a race car driver. There’s alot of preparation that goes into building that car and getting the team together and everything. But arm wrestling? It would almost make more sense to make a movie about the hand slap game from ON DEADLY GROUND.

Well, the answer to my question is that the movie is mostly about him hanging out with a little kid.

Still, this is a story about how winner takes all, loser takes a fall. It’s about how you should never turn away when the challenge is alive because the choice is yours to make in every chance you take. It argues that first the mind, then the soul, and when the heart gets pumped up for the goal, there’s no defeat because you’d sooner die and it’s man to man as we stand eye to eye. It’s also about how you should follow your heart no matter where the path may lead because in this country our hearts are open, we are free to fly again. It tells you that you know you got to break on through, there’s only one thing you can do. And that’s only from the first three songs on the soundtrack, by Sammy Hagar, Robin Zander and Larry Greene. We didn’t even get to Frank Stallone, Kenny Loggins or Eddie Money yet.

Stallone plays Lincoln “Hawk” Hawk, a truck driver who as the movie begins is already signed up for the Arm-Wrestling National Championships or whatever in Las Vegas. But his mind is on family. He doesn’t have one, but he used to. The wife that he left ten years ago (Susan Blakely) is about to have surgery, and she wants him to pick up his estranged son Michael from military school and bring him to the hospital. She seems to know this could be the end and she wants to let bygones be bygones and try to reconnect father and son.

Michael (David Mendenhall) couldn’t be more different from Stallone’s working class character Hawk if he was Dolph Lundgren. He talks alot, has a high-pitched voice, wears his school uniform, grew up rich with his grandfather (Robert Loggia) in a mansion (the same one they used in the Beverly Hillbillies tv show). He’s used to  traveling in grandpa’s private jet, but now he has to ride cross country in a semi with a Brut ad on the side. When Hawk shows up at the school to pick him up, Michael asks to see some ID. He keeps calling Hawk “sir” and lecturing him about cholesterol-heavy food and saying condescending things like “You don’t read much, do you?” He really doesn’t want to be hanging out with his dad, to the point that he actually climbs out of the truck and tries to make a run for it through freeway traffic.

Hawk knows he’s been a terrible father (really, not one at all) but he doesn’t know that it’s even worse than he thinks: grandpa never gave Michael any of the hundreds of letters he wrote to him over the years. I guess he should’ve been suspicious that he never got a response. It’s one of those things, like Bruce never having been sick before in UNBREAKABLE, where it seems like it would’ve had to have occurred to them at some point before.

Father and son tension comes to a head when Michael doesn’t like the music on the radio, so he turns it off. Hawk responds by turning it back on. Michael’s counter move is to then turn it off. So Hawk turns it back on again. But Michael has another trick up his sleeve: he turns it off, at which point Hawk turns it back on. Then Michael turns it back off. This goes on for a while, and every time one of them takes their turn it seems like they’re convinced that’s gonna be the end of it. It’s one of those really dramatic, fascinating competitions to watch like tic tac toe or, uh, arm wrestling.

But like I said, this is a movie with inspiration rock in it, so Hawk and son spend the night sleeping in the truck and wake up to a sunny training montage set to (I think) Kenny Loggins singing about new beginnings. They do pushups together, they tear the sleeves off the kid’s jacket and Hawk must say something really charming because before the song ends the kid is laughing and they seem to have grown closer.

But a true bond can’t just pop up during a montage. Hawk has got to share his culture with his son. This first happens when they stop at a diner and some muscleman taunts him into an arm wrestling match. Later, at another truck stop, there are some bigger kids playing video games and he pushes his kid into arm wrestling them in order to teach a valuable lesson about losing but then believing in yourself so that you get best 2 out of 3. I don’t know if maybe there’s something in their genetics or something but somehow these Hawks seem to defy the laws of physics the way they can overpower larger, stronger opponents in contests of pure strength.

There’s also a scene where Hawk gets fed up with his son making condescending comments about truck driving so in order to prove how hard it is he forces the kid to take over driving. Hawk is very proud and doesn’t seem to realize that he lost the argument when the kid turns out to be able to drive it surprisingly well. But jesus man, I don’t agree with his decision to force a little kid to drive a giant truck and trailer on a windy road like that. He’s incredibly lucky the kid didn’t plow into some family in an RV and kill 8 people including themselves. You don’t get best 2 out of 3 on something like that. But I guess it would’ve proved his point that not just anybody can drive a truck.

It’s never mentioned why Hawk left his family other than “Well… I had some reasons,” and he thinks the important thing is that it was a mistake and he has to make up for it now. The wife doesn’t seem too bitter about the whole thing, in fact she seems to love Hawk and want to give her son back to him and never seems to have any negativity about it. But Grandpa despises Hawk, teaches Michael to hate him and tells him lies like that he’s a drug dealer. Grandpa comes off like a real asshole, and obviously looks down on Hawk for being an uneducated truck driver and not very well spoken. But you gotta admit he has pretty good reason to want to get custody of the kid. He’s raised him himself, and he has plenty of money. Hawk fucking abandoned this kid and now he wants custody again – what’s he gonna do, home school him in the truck while he makes his cross country cologne deliveries?

On the other hand Grandpa has Terry Funk (wrestler profiled in BEYOND THE MAT, also appears in ROAD HOUSE) and some other henchmen who he sends to kidnap the kid, and that’s not cool. Also he’s always trying to pay people off to get what he wants. I don’t like this guy, even though he’s kind of right.

Hawk is trying to make amends and be there for this kid, but he’s not doing the best job. First of all, by the time they get to the hospital mom has already died, and it’s not lost on the kid that Hawk chose bond-with-your-deadbeat-dad-road-trip over tell-your-mother-you-love-her-before-she-dies. Michael correctly cries, “You’ve never been around when anybody needed you.” This would be a good chance for Hawk to stick around and prove otherwise, but he chooses option B: get up and walk away in the middle of the fucking funeral. Right in front of everybody. At least wait until afterwards, don’t rub it in for the poor kid.

Hawk could still have legal custody, but physically the kid is at the Beverly Hillbillies mansion and Terry Funk and the boys won’t let him in to talk. This is another point where in my opinion he doesn’t use the best possible judgment. What he does, he drives his semi through the gate and the side of the mansion.

So, you know, by the time he gets to Vegas for the arm wrestling he’s in some debt for property damage, has pawned off his beloved truck (but kept the hawk-shaped hood ornament, see poster) and signed over custody of the kid (at the kid’s request). With this shit going on in his life you figure he’s not gonna have the eye of the tiger, and also it’s hard not to notice that pretty much every other competitor has arms bigger than his head. So this doesn’t look good.

Remember when I complained about the races in THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS being uncinematic because it’s just driving in a straight line and when you’re not going fast enough you push a button that makes you go faster? Arm wrestling is pretty much the same. Instead of pushing a button you shift your hand a little.

And this has the extra disadvantage of not being even remotely believable. After RAMBO Stallone become synonymous with bodybuilding, but the real life arm wrestlers who are cast in the movie would make Schwarzenegger look scrawny. They’re these crazed giants and he’s “a newcomer from the trucker division.”

We’ve all discussed different types of fights where a smaller opponent can defeat a behemoth through knowledge of chokes and armbars and shit. I’ve seen a UFC fight where a little guy beat a Yokozuna sumo wrestler by breaking his nose on the way down to the mat and certain doom. But there is no fucking way that Stallone could beat any of these monsters in arm wrestling just because he believes in himself. This is not DUMBO. This is not THE SECRET. This is a simple matter of one arm that is heavier and stronger than another arm.

I mean, even in this bullshit cinematic version of arm wrestling they don’t pretend there’s any skill to it. The main training that Stallone does is pulling on a weight inside his truck while he’s driving. And you see guys at the competition just carrying around dumbells in the crowd. This is not kung fu, you don’t need total concentration. You just lift heavy stuff while you’re going about your daily routine.

For the final match (against a real arm wrestling champion, I think) their idea for making it more dramatic and suspenseful is that there’s a part where their grip slips, so they have to be tied together. I think this is supposed to seem like an upping of the ante, like when Van Damme had the glass shards glued to his forearms in BLOODSPORT or KICKBOXER (I always forget which one is which), but I mean they were supposed to hold onto each other anyway. The strap just makes sure they do a better job.

What is pretty cool about the climax though is that the kid finds out some new information and decides he wants to give his two-time deadbeat dad a chance. So he sneaks out, illegally drives a pickup truck to the airport and flies to Vegas, getting to the casino just in time to cheer his dad on. I like it because I’ve seen about ten thousand movies and TV shows where a fuck up dad has to race against time to try to get to his son’s sporting competition, but I don’t think I’ve seen one where the son has to race to get to the deadbeat’s sporting competition.

Also he gets a break between matches to punch Terry Funk through a set of doors.

OVER THE TOP was actually directed by Menahem Golan, co-head of Golan and Globus/Cannon Films. I guess this is probly his best known directorial work, closely followed by DELTA FORCE and then ENTER THE NINJA. Despite its complete ridiculousness it’s not made as shittily as alot of the movies he just produced, and it has one unique directorial touch when he works in some interviews with the real arm wrestlers about what they do. Stallone even does a good job seeming cinema verite in his interview, where he explains the philosophy of something we already noticed earlier, that he likes to turn his hat around backwards before a match.

The script was by Stallone and Sterling Silliphant, the student of Bruce Lee and Academy Award winner for IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. (He also wrote SHAFT IN AFRICA and THE ENFORCER.) I don’t know what in fuck’s name these guys were trying to do here, but it’s a pretty funny movie. I enjoyed it. I think maybe Stallone’s best quality is that he wears his heart on his sleeve. He tries to be a poet for the big lugs, he tries to show that they have a heart and soul even if they don’t know how to put it into enunciated words. People remember him for his muscles, guns and explosive tipped arrows, but most of his movies are as much about his emotions, his relationships. To me FIRST BLOOD is more about his break down at the end than all the awesome survival tactics.

So I appreciate that even when he does a stupid movie like this I can tell that it came from his heart. When his idea muscles are in top condition he comes up with ROCKY, when they’re not he comes up with this. But I can get some enjoyment out of both.

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So now I’ve seen it and I know TANGO & CASH is a fun but not all that great 1989 action movie that personifies (moviefies?) the excess of the ’80s, and not just because it has a monster truck in it.

Stallone plays Ray Tango, a neatly groomed supercop in a grey Armani suit and Roy Scheider glasses. He’s a wealthy stock trader who still works as a narcotics cop because he needs “the action.” Kind of the good guy version of Patrick Bateman. Meanwhile Kurt Russell plays Gabe Cash (you’d think the stock trader would be Cash, come to think of it), the sloppy t-shirt wearing, long-haired, cynical hero cop from another precinct on the other and totally different side of town. Both use Unorthodox Methods (playing chicken with a semi truck, choking information out of a prisoner who pretends he doesn’t speak English). Both are celebrities, sharing the front page of the newspaper in two different unrelated stories. They have alot in common and I don’t want to give anything away but there is a slim possibility that they just might hate each other but be forced to work together through extraordinary circumstances and then slowly but surely bond and help each other and gain each other’s begrudging respect but then continue to bust each other’s balls while giving each other the manly smile of secret friendship.

The villain, played by Jack Palance, wears a white suit, spends most of the movie in a board room and calls his weapons and drugs outfit a “multibillion dollar business.” He knows all about Tango and Cash and often talks about them by their full names or as Tango and Cash, never as Cash and Tango, even though at first they’re not even friends or colleagues, they only know each other by reputation and don’t like each other at all. But I guess he is an all-knowing villain who can sense the title of the movie.

So he sets them up for the murder of an undercover cop, they go to prison, get out and come after him. It’s like RICOCHET meets THE ODD COUPLE.

The music is cheesy ’80s style keyboard and drum machines courtesy of Harold “Axel F Theme” Faltermeyer. The two leads are constantly joking, making little quips to each other, usually not very funny ones though. The tone of the movie just doesn’t ever gel, it’s constantly trying to be clever but only pulling it off every once in a while. It’s definitely closer to a serious action movie than a comedy but they try to go extra-wacky. For example, Kurt Russell dresses in drag to leave a club unseen by cops, then flirts bats his eyelashes at them like he’s Bugs Bunny or something. Also there’s a scene where Cash is getting a massage but from what is being said and from Tango’s vantage point it totally seems like he’s fuckin Teri Hatcher! Do you get it? Can you believe what a crazy misunderstanding just happened there? It’s like Three’s Company! If these jokes were really racist or homophobic they could sell them to Michael Bay.

I like seeing Stallone (or any action guy) trying to stretch it a little. But with that voice it’s a little hard to swallow. Honestly I don’t really buy him as Mr. Fancypants there, it’s worse than Steve McQueen in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. I don’t care if Stallone is rich in real life, the guy talks and he’s working class. Nice try though, and when he’s not talking he looks very convincing.

There are some pretty good action moments. I like when they have to jump onto a wire and slide down using their belts. This is also some of the better funny-dialogue in the movie when they discuss how electricity works.

There’s a pretty good selection of character actors in here. Philo Beddo’s pal Geoffrey Lewis is one of their captains (uncredited for some reason), Eddie Bunker is another captain, Clint Howard is Stallone’s cell mate, Michael J. Pollard is a weird inventor guy who works for the police department and therefore makes souped up vehicles and prototype weapons for Cash, Brion James is one of the bad guys (doing a really bad British accent)… you also got James Hong, Michael Jeter, Lewis Arquette, and an uncredited Billy Blanks (I didn’t notice it was him).

Most memorable is Robert Z’Dar as an inmate who wants to kill Tango because he broke his jaw on the streets (”That jaw?” Cash asks). Z’Dar is a topic I don’t think we’ve ever discussed here. Holy shit. Have you seen this guy? He looks like they transplanted a dinosaur’s jawbone into him by mistake. He’s intimidating for all the traditional reasons but if you had him after you you just know you’d get distracted staring at that mother and then he’d bite your arm off or just give you a fatal chinbutt or something. He should just go by his last name so he sounds like an evil space dictator, because he’s earned it.

I should also note that Teri Hatcher is the female lead in the movie but she’s not that bad I guess.

One possible reason for the weirdly off feel of the movie is that the director was not a Hollywood guy. Starngely enough it was directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, the Russian director of UNCLE VANYA and SIBERIADE and co-writer of Andrei Tarkovsky’s ANDREI RUBLEV. And I imagine either he didn’t really know how to handle it or (equally or more likely) the Hollywood types kept second guessing him and fucking everything up. According to the usual internet sources Albert Magnoli, director of PURPLE RAIN, took over late in production. Stallone also fired original director of photography Barry Sonnenfeld (even though back then he seemed like a genius because of RAISING ARIZONA and all that), and the movie was supposedly rescued by LETHAL WEAPON editor and EXECUTIVE DECISION director Stuart Baird in the editing room.

I don’t know man, I guess I don’t really get it. It’s worth watching to see all these guys together, and especially the two stars, but it’s a little forced and has way too many winks at the audience. Okay, I get why it’s supposed to be funny when somebody mentions Rambo and Tango says “Rambo is a pussy,” but what about this part where they’re discussing breakfast pastries and he says “I hate Danish”? I had to read IMDb trivia to learn that line was supposed to be funny because he had recently been divorced from Brigitte Nielsen. So, uh, that is not really a joke that lasted 20 years in my opinion.

Still, it has something. Not sure what.

[ratings]

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Stallone, Banderas, Julianne Moore, Richard Donner. Not a bad roster, but I never heard anything good about this 1995 studio action picture. I’ve had it on my list for a while anyway because the script is credited to Andy & Larry Wachowski and Brian Helgeland. How do you go too wrong with that? Whoever’s script got ditched they were rewritten by somebody good. Either the MATRIX guys or the PAYBACK guy.

Well, overall the movie’s only okay, decent, watchable. Some nice touches, but fairly forgettable. But I gotta say, the first half hour or so approaches greatness. My favorite scene is actually right at the beginning. Stallone is leading another guy out into the woods at gunpoint, obviously to put him down like Old Yeller. Their faces are glum, like this is an inevitable conclusion they’ve dreaded for a long time. Both are wearing nice suits and ties, Stallone is wearing knee-high rubber boots.

Suddenly they get to a marsh. The guy’s shoe sticks in the mud. He laughs. “You know, when I saw you I wasn’t scared, but I did wonder why you were wearing those. Now I know.”

Just the perfect mood, a grim sort of bonding between two killers. He knows he can’t get out of this one so he accepts his fate. And there’s no point in being a dick about it, he’s a murderer too, he knows Stallone’s just doing his job. Might as well make conversation.

I don’t think Stallone talks in the entire scene. He’s really good in this movie. So quiet and his face looks dead of emotion except in little subtle traces. This is one of those “hitman trying to quit” stories, but he doesn’t turn out to have a heart of gold. For all we know it’s just self preservation, fighting back when his people (the CIA?) try to screw him. He fully intends to kill Julianne Moore when he tracks her down, and he only doesn’t when Banderas is there too. See, Banderas is this younger guy who’s been a real pain in the ass lately, he keeps showing up and trying to steal Stallone’s targets. He’s hyper and goofy, and he knows everything about the older assassin, who he idolizes and studies. But he’s okay with killing him, that would be a great honor to him.

The really great part of the movie is when it’s just about the two assassins. They first come face-to-face when Stallone pretends to be a taxi driver and picks Banderas up. So they confront each other through bullet-proof glass, size each other up, then try to figure out how to get around the glass to shoot each other. (Banderas tries shooting through the glass, laughs and says he had to at least try it.)

The story doesn’t fall apart but becomes more standard Hollywood stuff when Moore comes in. She’s a reclusive computer genius who talks to her cats and sets up complicated tricks using remote control cars. Kind of a familiar goofy character doing movie computer hacker stuff. She’s trying to sell a computer disc full of mcmuffiny secrets, Banderas is trying to take her out, etc. Of course she goes with Stallone, they bond, work together to outsmart and outgun the people after them. There is a bank account, a Day of the Dead celebration (the holiday, not the movie), an abandoned church hideout. Movie stuff. Enjoyable, but you’ve seen it before.

That beginning was so good though, I wondered who was responsible, so I looked it up. Turns out the Wachowskis wrote the original script and sold it to Joel Silver around the same time they sold THE MATRIX. When Donner signed on though he didn’t like the script (so why did you sign on, pal?) and had Helgeland rewrite the whole thing. Supposedly he toned down the violence and the love story. The Wachowskis tried to take their names off of it.

Both scripts are online, and someday I’d like to read both versions. But for now I just wanted to see who wrote the scene with the mud and the boots.

The Wachowski script had the scene, complete with the shoe getting stuck in the mud and everything. But in their version there was a long back-and-forth conversation, the guy asking all kinds of questions about how the assassin game works, how he does different things, what’s going through his mind about death, etc. They talk about moon pies. You know – that dialogue everybody tried to do back then after they saw PULP FICTION, but they didn’t think they were copying.

It was the Helgeland version that trimmed down the talking, made the subject more serious, made Stallone quiet and had the line about the boots. So, point goes to Helgeland. You are forgiven for not salvaging MAN ON FIRE.

[ratings]

By the way I would like to take a moment to welcome A.B. King to the talkback. Welcome, A.B.

The ragtag team of the title are a group of elite mercenary badasses – at one point described as “totally prepared to die in a blaze of glory” – hired to take out a dictator in the South American country of Corza. I do not have an opinion on what’s going on in Corza because I believe it is a fictional country, but if in fact they’re real I’m against them. They got all kinds of human rights violations and shit. No good.

Of course, the mission is not necessarily what it seems, there may or may not be some doublecrosses and deceits, etc.

The Expendables never come out and refer to themselves as The Expendables, but they do sport tattoos with an Expendables logo. Their lifestyle is rough but they have a dark sense of humor about it. The leader of the Expendables, Barney (played by Stallone I assume) has a good way of describing their purpose: “We remove those hard to get at stains.” They try to do the right thing, but the movie itself seems sort of uncomfortable with the idea of soldiers of fortune and with puppet dictators and CIA tampering in other countries. It’s a fun action movie but not some jingoistic imperialist deal like I think some people assume.

While I’m sure Stallone did some research about how these things work in the War On Terror era, happily this is not one of these Greengrassian modern action movies that tries to seem completely reality based. This is a movie where a team of 5 can take on an army of 100, where armed men still sometimes engage in martial arts and fisticuffs, where many, many things blow up, where occasionally a character might have something sarcastic to say during combat. In other words, a good old fashioned action movie. An endangered species.

Barney is a very different character from Rambo. For one thing, his name is Barney. For another he talks in more than one sentence sometimes. He’s almost a father figure to the team and finds himself always listening to other people’s problems and trying to be supportive. The other character who gets the most screen time is the lovelorn Lee Christmas. He’s supposed to be American but calls a guy “mate” at one point, which means he’s played by Jason Statham. There’s also Kong Kao, who will be played by Jet Li. He does alot of kicking, but is much more of a supporting character than Li usually plays. I do think it’s a pretty good character for Li, though, because he gets some funny lines. He’s an unhappy smartass, not the usual Li type of character.

(Of course for all I know Stallone is playing the Chinese martial arts expert Kong Kao and Li is playing the weathered veteran mercenary Barney Ross. I don’t want to make any assumptions here.)

Those are the marquee names, but the actor I was happiest to see cast was Dolph Lundgren. Obviously it’s cool to see the Balboa/Drago rematch (or reteam), but I’m excited more because I think Lundgren deserves to be on the big screen again. The DTV pictures he’s been directing and starring in are surprisingly watchable, and physically he’s held up better than almost any of the ’80s and ’90s action stars. He still has a super hero physique with his towering height and square jaw, but looks more interesting with some wrinkles on his face.

Unfortunately, if Dolph is playing who I think he is then he’s only in a couple scenes. It’s a small but crucial role as an Expendable named Gunnar who comes into conflict with Kong. Harry has already reported that Lundgren will be fighting Li in the movie, so I will reveal that they get to fight twice. Let’s be honest, Li has alot to prove after being defeated onscreen by god damn Brendan Fraser in THE MUMMY TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR A FILM BY ROB COHEN. I mean, how the fuck does that work? That is unacceptable. So for him to face a guy who’s actually a martial arts champion and nearly a foot taller than he is will be good for Li’s rep. Also Dolph has a degree in chemical engineering, not sure if that is relevant.

We also know that Forest Ghost Dog Whitaker is in the movie. He plays Sands, a CIA agent tracking the Expendables. The Hollywood Reporter described the character as “devious” but in this draft at least he seems well-meaning. The same can’t be said for the CIA character they’re allegedly trying to get Sandra Bullock to play – she would be more like the bitch she plays at the beginning of CRASH and less like at the end when she’s cured of racism because she fell down and broke her ass. Harry also reported that UFC fighter Randy Couture (seen in SCORPION KING 2 and more importantly REDBELT) would be in the movie – I’m guessing he’s Paine, an American operative working for the dictator. If so it’s a generic henchman role that will require little acting ability, but at least he’ll get to fight Stallone.

There are also Expendables whose casting has not been revealed as far as I know. There’s Richard, who is the gay Expendable. It’s a plot point that he’s gay, but they don’t make any dumb jokes about it, he’s just a member of the team. I’m proud of Stallone for that one. On the other hand, the black Expendable isn’t much more than a benign Black Dude stereotype. He doesn’t get enough characterization, but on the positive side he owns a restaurant, is zealous about tacos and has a name even more cartoonish than Lee Christmas: his name is Hale Caesar. I approve of that.

(Have you ever met anybody with the last names Christmas or Caesar? I don’t think I have yet.)

The story is pretty standard, but if the movie works it will be partly because of the odd little touches here and there. I like that Barney is kind of a goofy old dude and doesn’t try to be up to date at all. We’re used to seeing Statham drive around in fancy brand new cars in his movies, in this one he’ll be in the passenger seat of Barney’s ‘56 Ford F-100 pickup truck. I don’t think it specifies if the thing is restored or not, but I like to picture it as a real junker. You can’t say Barney’s poor though, because he owns a plane. When the guy hiring them asks if he has children Barney says, “I have a seaplane.” He’s pretty proud of that thing.

I have no idea if this is the final draft, but most of the characters are pretty lightly sketched. On the page I wouldn’t say they seem like iconic action movie characters that we’re all gonna remember, but hopefully the cast can bring something more to them. Like I said, it’s a recipe. You’d hope Forest Whitaker could put a little spice on his role, for example.

Stallone does a good job of mixing up the location – they travel between the US, Mexico and Corza, which should keep it visually interesting. The action scenes, as written, are pretty good. There is variety, with action at sea, in a plane, in trucks, with guns, knives, feet, forearms, one-on-one and in a mob. My biggest hope for the movie is that the second Dolph vs. Jet fight will be much longer than what Stallone wrote down. As written it’s way too brief. Please Stallone, don’t skimp on that one. (Dolph gotta eat? I never did understand that “gotta eat” thing you guys like to write.)

Fortunately an action scene is often gonna be shot totally different than scripted. For the climactic “extraordinary battle scene” Stallone doesn’t even bother to script it, he just writes:

“THE BATTLE IS ON!! WHAT ENSUES IS A REMARKABLY SAVAGE EBB AND FLOW BATTLE. TO DESCRIBE THE ACTION DESIGNED FOR THIS SCENE WOULD TAKE MANY PAGES, SO TRUST ME, IT’LL BE LIKE NOTHING SEEN BEFORE.”

Maybe you can take Stallone at his word on that, or maybe he just wanted to figure it out later. In the screenplay Barney turns out to have a few tricks up his sleeve that I didn’t expect, so maybe Stallone does too. We’ll see.

I wouldn’t say THE EXPENDABLES is a great script necessarily, but it definitely has potential. He’s got a good backbone that now needs some charismatic performances and well-executed action sequences on top. We know it has a good cast and that the action in RAMBO was pretty good. So I think this has a good shot. I’m still excited.

In other words, “THE EXPENDABLES is a keeper!” –The Ain’t It Cool News

p.s. Seriously, could somebody explain that “gotta eat” joke to me? Stallone’s character says it in the script and I feel left out

p.p.s. Did you know there’s a band called Balboa who only play covers of songs from ROCKY movies? BalboaBand.Com

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/39600

Poor John Rambo. Drafted into ‘Nam, transformed into a killing machine, trained to eat things that would make a billygoat puke. He came home, butted heads with an asshole sherriff, fought a bunch of cops, got a pardon so he could rescue some POWs and “win this time,” lived at a monastery I believe, real good stickfighter, made some allegiances in Afghanistan that in retrospect were not so hot but you know what they say about hindsight. Now he lives in a shack in Thailand where he catches deadly snakes for a living. His first line in the movie is telling a guy to go fuck himself. He’s real cynical about the state of the world and the inevitability of bloodshed, but some Christian missionaries convince him against his better judgment to take them in his boat and drop them off in a war zone in Burma. You guys run along now, don’t get raped or blown up. Then when they don’t come back on time he has to go back and drop off the team of mercenaries the church hires to rescue them. I wish the team had a cool name like The Holy Rollers and had pictures of Jesus, Joseph and Mary airbrushed on their weapons, but no, they’re just regular guns for hire, they don’t give a shit about that stuff. They don’t even care about the money that much, so they’re gonna turn around when things look bad. But Rambo (to them “the boatman”) changes their minds. Using a bow and arrow.

Rambo’s changed over the years, at least physically. He no longer looks like he’s chiseled out of stone. Now he’s chopped out of wood. He’s a fuckin tree trunk wearing a headband. Wide and thick and definitely not pretty anymore.

I like the character of Rambo, and I always like seeing him, but the mentally ill can make some bad choices. In his case that includes going on a rampage as well as making three ridiculous sequels to his classic original. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy that crap too, to a certain point, but FIRST BLOOD is a legitimately great movie that towers above them and tries to be polite about it but most likely would not want to hang out with the other ones if at all possible. The idea of the original book and movie was to “bring the Vietnam War home,” but the idea of the sequels is just to send Rambo off to different wars.

FIRST BLOOD is great because you can get behind this poor bastard, even if he’s crazy, because he’s a vet and people shouldn’t be treating him like that. But him and the sherriff are just so stubborn that their dislike of each other escalates into a fucking war! In the first one he’s Travis Bickle, you’re disturbed by what he’s doing. In the sequels he’s Michael Jordan, you’re supposed to clap for him. The sequels are a bunch of gun battles, the original is an epic personality conflict that builds until the classic scene where Rambo breaks down and blubbers about what happened to his buddies. It’s a better story and a better character and it offers you all that violence you ordered but still in the end is about emotions. It assumes you’re a human and not just a sadist.

After the first blood though, what are you supposed to do for second blood? Is he gonna go on another rampage until he breaks down and cries about how guilty he feels for the first rampage? No, all they could really figure out to do is some more UNCOMMON VALOR type war and rescue movies that aren’t as original or as meaningful as FIRST BLOOD.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed RAMBO. By which I mean the new one which is titled RAMBO and not the first sequel which is subtitled RAMBO. I’m talking about RAMBO: RAMBO FIRST BLOOD PART 2 PART 3. Even while being confused by the title it’s nice to see a serious old fashioned action movie in this day and age. Except for some gratuitous skipped frames (and digital touchups on the violence) it’s pretty old school. No attempt to seem modern or hip or make jokes or even point out that it’s old school. There’s not some young wiseass character making comments about Rambo, serving as the voice for the younger viewers. Fuck the younger viewers. If they need a babysitter they shouldn’t be here. The movie is very sincere so I had to kind of like it.

The action is very good and gruesome. Lots of limbs flying, people flying, blood flying. Rambo tears a guy’s throat out. He shoots people into goo. He shoots alot of arrows. He turns an unexploded WWII bomb into a PREDATOR bomb. He’s a little more down to earth than in part 2 and part 3. He has help from other badasses, he uses powerful guns as a crutch, his arrows do not have explosive tips, he runs around but he’s not being a ninja or anything. The guy’s in his 60s. The villains are hatable, though less than one-dimensional (and why does the main guy have to be gay?) The mercenaries are pretty tough, but not memorable characters.

And to be honest you gotta kind of wonder why Rambo hasn’t learned more over the years. Maybe he doesn’t have a TV out there in that shack but I’m betting somebody told him what became of his buddies in Afghanistan. He was fighting for the underdog there but it turns out the world is more complicated than just pick which side you think is the good guys and then kill and maim 500 people on the other side. Maybe he does understand that and that’s why he tried to stay out of Burma, but the way he talks about not changing things if you don’t have weapons, I think maybe he really thinks one of these wars he fights some day will actually work. He used to seem more aware, even kind of enlightened about his violence, he just didn’t know how to turn it off. Your classic asskicking pacifist.

And it’s kind of a problem that the movie is all about how bad this genocide is, and yet the high points of the movie all involve Rambo horribly murdering person after person after person after person after a whole bunch of other people that he just shot and blew up and arrowed and tore a throat out and knocked onto a landmine and blew up and etc. This is a movie that opens with a montage of real dead bodies and mutilated people in a real war and yet the audience is laughing excitedly at all the carnage that happens later. And you can’t really blame them that much. They want fun even if the movie is sitting there moping.

If you ask me ROCKY BALBOA was a way better revisiting because it was all about a character. The boxing match is thrilling, but most of the movie is about what’s left of Rocky’s life and what he makes of it. I like watching the different ways Rambo can kill people, but I’d rather know about what else is going on in there. Will he ever get his humanity back? At the end of the movie he takes the advice of one of the missionaries and finally comes home. It’s great to see him back in the U.S., walking down a road wearing the same clothes as in FIRST BLOOD. It’s like a second chance at coming home, hopefully not going on a rampage this time. If some cop gives you a hard time just turn the other cheek, Rambo. Seriously.

Anyway it’s a nice ending, probaly my favorite part of the movie, but to be honest I’m not sure how he got to that point. I’m not sure what lesson he learned or how he changed as a person. He just killed alot of people for what he thought was right. Again.

If they’re not going to do a more involved character study then I hope if there’s a part 5 they go huge. They gotta have Rambo at war in a city. What if in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE Simon had said he wanted to talk to John McClane and they said McClane? He’s suspended and he has a hangover. I’m gonna have you talk to this other guy, John Rambo, is that okay? If Rambo had to deal with some guys like that it might be new, but no more of these rescuing prisoners in the jungle stories, okay guys?

Also I was disappointed that he never ate anything that would make a billygoat puke, or even gag a little bit. Nice to see Rambo back though

[ratings]

Cobretti struts in wearing sunglasses and chewing on a matchstick. You’d think he’d want to have the full power of vision at his disposal in a situation like this, but he chooses fashion instead – not a great character trait for a human being, but acceptable for an action movie hero. If you want to get picky Dirty Harry probaly should’ve put down his hot dog to foil that bank robbery, but he didn’t, and we admire him for that.

Speaking of Dirty Harry, Cobretti wishes he was Dirty Harry. This movie is a total ripoff of that one. But visually Cobretti reminds me of another action movie icon: HARD BOILED’s Tequila, with his sunglasses and toothpick. That must be why when I first heard of Chow Yun Fat they said he was “the Stallone of Hong Kong.” People still remembered COBRA back then, I guess. They look kind of the same, but Cobretti has a picture of a cobra on the pearl handle of his gun, while Tequila doesn’t have a picture of tequila. Tequila is still a better character in a way better movie, but Cobretti’s cobra insignia just edges him into the realm of acceptability. Congratulations, Cobretti.

The movie is stylishly directed by George Pan Cosmatos, same guy who did RAMBO a year earlier. He uses what was probaly called “MTV style” back then, lots of quick flashes edited to the rhythm of music (hey, what’s that robot? Hey, there’s that robot again. Why is there a robot?) but unlike modern asshole editors he respects the audience enough to build to a shot that explains what the quick flashes were all about (oh, I see, there is a fashion shoot in front of a robot). The opening is completely badass, with the Cobra firing an animated bullet into the camera, which explodes into the title of the movie. Meanwhile a psychopath rides a motorcycle silhouetted on a bright red sky, and this is intercut with shots of a bunch of crazy musclemen in a sewer doing some sort of workout or ritual involving axes. This was in those days of ‘85-’87 when movies like POLICE ACADEMY 2 and DRAGNET worried that some weird gang of punk rocker cultists would terrorize urban areas (at least those movies are comedies, though, this is a serious movie).

When I saw the motorcycle I first thought it was Cobra and when I saw the sewer I thought this was gonna be Stallone’s PUNISHER. But nope, he’s a Dirty Harry wannabe, a tough envelope-pushing cop constantly frustrated by all these bureaucrats and regulations that are so hung up on all this “accountability” and “checks and balances” and “system of American justice” and what not. You know how they are. The sergeant is played by Dirty Harry’s partner Reni Santoni and the pain in the ass pansy boss is Andrew Robinson, who was Scorpio in DIRTY HARRY. So the killer that we gotta break the rules to catch is now the guy telling us not to break the rules. THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN! CALL IN THE COBRA!

But Cobra doesn’t have just one Scorpio to catch, he has “the Night Slasher” which is actually the collaborative work of those ax maniacs in the sewer, crazed bodybuilding enthusiasts like Brian Thompson trying to bring a “new world” of mayhem and chaos. Demon Dave could be a member. Brigitte Nielsen (looking more like Kelly LeBrock than the Grace Jones type I remember her as) plays a super model who witnesses a killing and becomes their target. So the Cobra ends up protecting her, and various action happens.

Cobretti drives an old Mercury with a license plate that says some variation of “AWESOME” on it, which was probaly pretty awesome at the time. There’s a pretty good car chase, one of those ones where they’re going up and down little hills and start to get air, and at one point the Cobramobile actually catches so much air it scrapes across a hanging sign and shoots sparks everywhere.

Another good part is when Cobretti impales the villain on a hook, Leatherface style, and rolls him into a smelting plant. So there’s plenty of good stuff here, but it doesn’t add anything very new to the DIRTY HARRY formula, and it’s definitely not as good as DIRTY HARRY, so it doesn’t really overcome the paranoid politics. When Cobra comes out of the super market and a prickish reporter starts asking him pesky questions about what gives him the right to just kill people instead of using the ol’ due process, the movie is pushing it. We already had that conversation in the ’70s, Cobretti. Why don’t you go watch MAGNUM FORCE.

Notes: Before Eddie Murphy was cast in BEVERLY HILLS COP it was gonna be Stallone, and he was rewriting the script. That didn’t work out so he used some of those ideas for COBRA. Also, COBRA was based on a book originally called A RUNNING DUCK that was later made into the movie FAIR GAME starring Billy Baldwin and Cindy Crawford.

[ratings]

Of course, I’m coming late to the party. I missed this one when it came out in 1993 but I was planning on seeing it, so I saw it this week in 2007. So the rest of the world has had 14 years to know what I’m about to tell you: some guys robbing money from a treasury plane drop the money in the mountains, call a rescue team to try to steal their helicopter, and wind up having to deal with ace mountain climber Sylvester Stallone.

I wasn’t convinced during the opening. I know it’s a pretty famous action scene as far as ’90s action movies go, and the fact that it’s mostly real mountain climbing done by the real actors is undeniably impressive. But I couldn’t take all the casual weizenheimer talk as Stallone comes to rescue Michael Rooker and his date from a mountain peak. Even though the girl is supposed to be a novice she’s joking and flirting with Stallone and not showing any fear, which makes it hard to take the whole thing seriously. Especially since they’re up on a mountain where you’d figure it would be hard to talk to each other at such low volumes. Then the big scene with Stallone trying to grab the girl’s hand when she’s falling doesn’t look like it’s in those same real mountains so it kind of took me out of it.

But the movie gets better, this is a decent take on DIE HARD ON A MOUNTAIN. Stallone’s hero role makes sense: the bad guys have his friend Michael Rooker hostage to use as a guide. If they find the money they will kill Michael Rooker, so Stallone has to keep them from finding the money. It’s great to see Rooker (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER himself) playing a straight ahead good guy. He blames Stallone for the death of his girlfriend, but he is completely loyal to him and risks himself to save his former friend. DIE HARD is a more cynical movie where certain characters will betray anybody to save their own ass. So it had me expecting that Rooker would be the bad guy, or would help them because of his anger at Stallone, or would be tempted to. But no, you got heroism all over the place. I liked it.

There are certain levels of action movie quality. There are shitty action movies like, I don’t know, THE MARINE. There are masterpieces like DIE HARD and HARD BOILED. In the high-middle area are slick, formulaic but well-executed studio movies like UNDER SIEGE, UNDER SIEGE 2, and SPEED. CLIFFHANGER is somewhere in that area. A little lower altitude I think, but close.

Slickness might not be enough to make it memorable though, so you gotta have a couple crazy touches here and there that people will remember. And that’s where Renny comes in. One classic moment is the climax of a prolonged battle inside a cave. Stallone powerlifts a dude above his head and impales him on a stalactite. I trust I don’t need to explain any further. Obviously if you haven’t seen this yet you’re sold, I should probaly just end the review here.

And yet I go on. My other favorite part is when Stallone uses a guy as a sled. He slides down the mountain on this dude and then he pulls out his ice axe. And you’re thinking holy shit, he’s already sledding on the guy, now he’s gonna go ax murderer on him? While still sledding? Well, that’s not what happens, he uses the ax to hook into the ground so he doesn’t launch off the cliff with the sled-man. Good trick though, not only does he send him over a ledge, he makes him think he’s gonna get an ax to the face first. That guy must’ve shit his pants twice, once from the ax and a second time from the plummet.

Another highlight is John Lithgow doing a ridiculous Arrogant British Villain accent. He’s definitely no Hans Grueber, but he’s good for a laugh here and there.

The movie did test my good will at the end. It has a DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE style stretch where Stallone’s character is home free but unneccessarily goes after the bad guys. I mean, this is a regular mountain climber guy, this is not a cop or anything. His friend is free, Lithgow has released his girlfriend in exchange for the money. All he has to do is be safe, give him the money and everything’s okay. Instead he plays a trick where he throws the money into the helicopter blades. Why does he care? It’s just money. It’s not babies. It’s not money that belongs to babies. It’s from the treasury. Who gives a shit? Just give the asshole the money and live your life with your girlfriend in the mountains. I don’t have to say “don’t be a hero” because you already ARE a hero. Just give him the money.

But no, Stallone is too god damned stubborn to give this guy the money. I hate to say it but he kind of gets what he deserves when his trick backfires and he ends up down the side of the mountain wrestling John Lithgow on top of a helicopter somehow suspended by a wire. You reap what you sow, dude and in this case you’re reaping a suspended helicopter wrestling match. I’m glad you’re safe but that was pretty stupid there at the end. Quit trying to show off, hotshot.

[ratings]

It turns out I did the right thing preparing for this movie. I watched the original ROCKY for the first time in more than a decade. I meant to watch the sequels again too but didn’t get around to it. Well it turns out ROCKY BALBOA is a direct sequel to ROCKY. Forget about what happens in the middle, that still happened but this is all about revisiting what happened in part 1. This is what becomes of that young guy we saw 30 years ago, with the mumbling and the bad jokes, the deep hunger for achievement and the funny hat. It’s almost like those 7 UP documentaries, or BEFORE SUNRISE/BEFORE SUNSET, or maybe HALLOWEEN H20. With punching.

I know Harry down in Texas and his Buttnumberthon team went crazy over this movie, but the few people I knew that saw it were lukewarm on it at best. I heard it described as a long boring “why is Adrian dead?” drama followed by an awesome training montage and fight. That is partly accurate but personally I really liked the drama part. It’s not really about boxing, it’s just about this particular character who happens to be an ex-boxer. I think what made the movie enjoyable to me is that I completely believe this is what Rocky would turn into. I was worried that Sly had plastic surgeried himself in the convening years, that he’s too pretty now to play Rocky. But no, he’s looking older and wider and gruffer, still wearing that hat but now it looks like an old man hat. As a director he makes the wise decision of showing himself in alot of unflattering closeups that show he’s an old fighter. Now he walks around Philadelphia and he’s a beloved celebrity, everybody calls him by his first name and he’s happy to take photos with random people who come up to him. He runs a small, homey restaraunt (called Adrian’s, of course) where he hangs around and tells fight stories to the customers. The thing that’s really missing in his life though is what the original ROCKY ended on: Adrian.

When a highly trained team of terrorists kidnaps Adrian, Rocky has no choice but to– nah, just kidding. I think some people forget that ROCKY is not an action movie, it’s a best picture winning drama. And the new movie is a non-best picture winning drama. The movie begins on the anniversary of Adrian’s death of “the woman cancer.” Rocky visits her grave and we know he does this alot because he has a folding chair that he stashes in a tree in the cemetery. The first section of the movie has Rocky and his brother-in-law Paulie (still played by Burt Young) nostalgically visiting all the crucial locations from the original: the apartment, the pet store, the wreckage of what was the ice skating rink where he went on his first date with Adrian. I liked Paulie’s emotional outburst telling Rocky he doesn’t want to reminisce about all this shit. Rocky can do that because he was nice to Adrian, but Paulie knows he “treated her bad.”

There are references to details of ROCKY that I wouldn’t expect them to follow up on. He still has pet turtles (bigger now). He gets another dog (this time an old washed up one he can relate to instead of a young hungry one). His old opponent Spider Rico is back now, hanging out at his restaraunt. Remember when Rocky ran through that market and some dude threw him an orange? I think he visits that same market (no orange throwing takes place, though). The one that surprised me the most is when he visits the bar he used to go to and gets in a conversation with the bartender. After a little bit he realizes that she is Marie, the young girl who he lectured and walked home in part 1. Remember that scene? It’s not the same actress and she’s the wrong age but luckily most of us don’t remember exactly what little Marie looked like, so we fall for it. Anyway Rocky starts hanging out with her and she becomes one of the main characters (with Adrian dead you need a female in there somewhere I guess.)

Although the filmatism isn’t quite as raw and gritty as in part 1, they went for a little more realism than the rest of the series. The heavyweight champ he fights in an exhibition match is less of a supervillain than in some of the sequels. He’s a spoiled punk with an ego, so you root against him, but he has some moments even at the beginning to show he’s not a bad person. Even when he’s insulting Rocky by telling him he’ll hold back in the fight he’s genuinely trying to be nice.

The biggest difference is the fight, which (except for a too-arty passage of time montage in the middle) is shot like a real boxing match, and apparently they were really punching each other. It seems very real and for me that made it more involving. Because I saw it at this late date I didn’t have some sold out crowd getting excited and chanting “ROCKY! ROCKY!” There were probaly less than ten people in the theater and the crowd wasn’t rowdy at all but to my surprise some girl yelled out “Come on Rocky!” several times during the fight, like she thought she was really there. The first time it happened I half convinced myself it was just really good surround sound, but then it kept happening. That proves it, this is a good scene, it tricked somebody into thinking it was a live event. But it was only a movie.

The sentiments in this movie may be a little corny, and a little too rehashed from the first ROCKY picture. But to me it really works because it feels so sincere. The first movie was about this young hungry guy tired of being a loser, wanting to get somewhere in life, getting his big shot and going as far as he can with it. And obviously Stallone was in a similar situation to his character and he did pretty well, he got on Oscar for the screenplay and everything. ROCKY BALBOA does the same sort of thing, now he’s this old guy that people like but they think he’s a joke, they think he’s used up. And he knows people think he’s crazy, including his son (no longer Sage Stallone and now working an AMERICAN PSYCHO type job) for wanting to fight again. But he has this one thing he wants to do and of course Stallone was the same way, wanting to do this last ROCKY movie even if people are laughing at a 60 year old man doing another boxing movie. You gotta love the training montage where his trusty corner man goes through a list of all the things his old man body can’t do anywmore and why his only hope is blunt force and he says, “Let’s start building some HURT BOMBS!”

One thing that’s weird about this movie. Since they are homaging/rehashing moments from the first movie, of course they gotta do Rocky jogging and going up the stairs and what not. The sequence ends with a freeze frame of Rocky holding his fist in the air triumphantly. It would look pretty badass except he’s also holding his mangy dog Punchy in the shot, so it looks goofy. Just to make sure Rocky’s ego doesn’t get too big.

The funny thing though is they used the freeze frame shot for the poster. Only they photoshopped out the poor dog. Can you believe that shit? I would be so pissed if I was that dog. Come on marketing department, you saw the movie, you know you can’t count that dog out just because he’s old. That dog is gonna bite you on the ass. That dog deserves his revenge, and you deserve to be bit. I got half a mind to go around with a sharpie and draw the dog back onto all the posters. I am not a good draw-er though so it will probaly end up looking like a seal or a weasel or something. And you know what, it would be pretty cool if Rocky was on the museum steps holding a seal. I wonder why they didn’t do that. Just one of those weird things I guess. Maybe a budgetary issue.

[ratings]