Review of The Expendables 2 (2012) by Tristan M — 02 Sep 2014

Far better than the first movie of this franchise, helped mostly by the addition of characters. Few movies are as epic as seeing Schwarzenegger, Willis, Stallone, Lundgren, Crews, Couture, Statham and Norris all fighting together side by side.

But for some reason Liam Hewsworth is in the film, and he does not fit in with the other stars and shouldn't have been in the movie at all. Of course they dodge every bullets fired at them and the enemies they kill are all mindless and there only to be killed, but that's beside the point.

The point is having all these stars together at once to kick some ass. And that's exactly what they do. As a film it lacks a lot of stuff, like how did Gunner survive being shot above the heart in the last movie, be presumed dead then just show up in this film without explanation to how he didn't die? So there's some plot holes, their just thrown into battle, and they survive against hundreds of enemies who are either shooting and missing or standing and being useless.

The action scenes were awesome to watch, but they weren't all that well done, and the blood was still very fake looking CGI, although better than the original. So references to the actors past movies are always loved, but they aren't frequent enough.

Crashing a plane into a tunnel, and surviving is cool, but stupid, and things seem to blow up way too easy. The end battle at the airport terminal is worth five stars for how epic it is with the cast all shooting without effort, and driving around in a smart car while shooting is awesome.

So the movie wasn't great, but all the characters together in a better plot and with more excitement than the original, this movie should be seen if you've seen the movies of these famous action movie actors and loved them.

It is however nothing like most of them, and there's nothing out there like it. A simple compilation of 80s action stars teaming up.