R, 1 hr. 43 min. Directed
by: Sylvester Stallone. Release Date:
August 13, 2010. DVD Release Date: November
23, 2010.
Conceptually, this wasn’t terrible, and it was probably well
overdue: an ensemble cast of Hollywood’s
greatest action film stars over the last… two generations. As we could expect, there are all kinds of
nifty special effects and fight sequences throughout the course of the
film. To be fair, I thought the fight
sequences were particularly good, and I liked that there was some attempt to
show that while these guys might occasionally veer to the wrong side of the
moral line, that they could still be good people. The truth is always that even good people can
do bad or horrible things in support of some greater good. As a generic action film, I suspect there’s
never been a movie made with MORE action-packed scenes. There’s little down time from a variety of
shoot-‘em ups and explosions
But, there are a ton of problems in this movie. Several of the bigger stars are almost
wasted: The Governator, Jet Li, Mickey
Rourke, and Bruce Willis were all relegated to minor roles, and quite frankly, these
are the only members of the cast who bring any real acting talent to the
table. It’s not always a LOT of talent,
but it’s more than the rest of the cast, well, combined.
While I get that this is supposed to be bringing together two of the
most classic action stars (by which I mean Stallone and Lundgren), they’re also
the least interesting, and the rotation of the supporting cast was done in a
way that was slightly reminiscent of the way X-Men teams are selected in the
comics. If you aren’t a fan of the comic
series, it’s done with obvious effort to include face time for the entirety of
the ever-shifting (and generally increasing) numbers of the world’s favorite
mutant superhero team. About half the
scenes seem to include rather big names, but seem to be treated in a way that
suggests they’re there for the sake of adding their name to the cast list.
The story is… messy, even by action movie standards. While I liked that this story attempts to
delve into the personal lives of these bad ass guys, I thought that it really
didn’t need to be there. If the primary
point of this movie was to be an action movie on ‘roids, then why pull away
from the decent action sequences every 15-20 minutes? It’s not as if the cast they highlight
actually have sufficient dramatic chops to pull off what we saw. Without doing any spoilers, I’m speaking
specifically of the relationship between Charisma Carpenter (who CONTINUES to
sound and act exactly like Cordelia Chase, even now that Buffy’s been over for about a decade) and Jason Statham, who,
frankly, couldn’t emote if his life depended on it. The only way this could have been worse was
to replace Statham with Channing Tatum.
My final problem is with Stallone. Is there some explanation for why he looks
like the random-product lovechild of a Guy Fawkes mask (a la V For Vendetta) and one of the cast
members from the Old French Whore skits on Saturday
Night Live? I’m guessing there’s
some combination of a bad face lift and worse makeup artist, but I couldn’t
figure it out, and it’s been my complaint since I first started seeing trailers
for this movie in 2010.
So, unless you just HAVE to see this assembly of action
movie avengers together in one place (and remember that there’s a sequel on the
books for 2012), you can probably skip this.
Forever.
