The Expendables 2 (2012)

Last night I finally got around to going to see The Expendables 2 with my boyfriend (of course!).  He’s a big fan of all the old school action stars, so it was really a lot of excitement on his end.  I’d be lying if I wasn’t a bit worried (as usual) for a sequel.  A lot of the actors added onto this one that I haven’t had much exposure to so my boyfriend was telling me a short description of who they were during the movies.  You know, general description like martial artist or wrestling, etc.  Honestly, thats what you need to expect what awesome moves they’ll pull and surprise you.  Enough with the rambling…here we go!

Lets say I wanted and expected to get exactly what was in the first.  If they managed to be at par, I was going to be extremely happy because I had a happy thrill ride in the first one.  I LOVE testosterone movies.  I’m serious…explosions, gun fights, fist fights, martial arts, etc.  I didn’t expect this movie to have a crazy plot either, nothing too deep.  I just expected it to have the minimum to get the action going.

What did I get? MAXIMUM SATISFACTION!! My eyes were glued to the screen.  Right from the beginning to the final showdown, I was hooked.  It was so fun!

It had a really nice mix of humor also.  I felt it was mostly because the old cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews and Randy Couture had a really good chemistry, especially Stallone and Statham and their random bickering was just absolutely hilarious.  You have Lundgren with his random comments and then Crews’ remarks.  On top of that, they added Liam Hemsworth which had a little side story to supplement.  I have to say that I really enjoyed his appearance.  I haven’t seen any of his other movies yet since I didn’t catch Hunger Games in theatres and then I haven’t wanted to sit down and watch Last Song yet either.  This will definitely motivate me to do it though.  We also got an Chinese action actress, Nan Yu who started off not doing too much but built into a character that pulled off some pretty cool moves.  Of course, the extended appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis is always a plus (despite its constant referral to its past movies, first 2 times was alright, eventually was starting to roll my eyes).  They played an interesting part in how this movie flowed.  Then we have the new roles played by Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and even Scott Adkins.  These roles pulled my boyfriend mostly because he grew up with them and that was the fun part I think.  Scott Adkins had left his mark for my boyfriend in Undisputed 2; Jean-Claude Van Damme was for the reknowned martial arts and well, Chuck Norris…is Chuck Norris.  The cast itself boost this movie’s raw action up so many levels.

Seeing as the cast itself are a lot of awesome action stars, we are expected to have just an amazing experience.  Let me tell you, it didn’t disappoint me at least.  I thought it was amazing.  It started off with lots of explosions, guns, big cars, ramming through obstacles.  There’s a lot of sticking up for each other going on as well. We get surprise covers everywhere.  From the beginning, with Hemsworth’s character in the sniper role and making his appearance as the addition to the Expendables crew.  Chuck Norris also comes to the rescue for a little snapshot in the middle with lots of shooting.  Honestly, there really wasn’t much drama going on in terms of the plot.  Its start forward: The team starts with a mission to introduce the cast, then falls into a mission that they are assigned with by Bruce Willis’s character as making up a situation to retrieve something from a destroyed plane.  They go in and things end up going bad when another team, the villain played by Jean-Claude Van Damme (called Vilain) and his right hand man, (played by Scott Adkins) comes in.  The plan afterwards in response to Statham’s question, “What now?” Stallone responds, “Track him, find him, kill him”.  At that point, you know that the intensity level is going to shoot up.  If nothing else caught you, the final showdown was seriously awesome!  I mean everyone shows their crazy fighting, shooting, tackling, martial arts abilities.

All in all, I really enjoyed The Expendables 2.  I would even say that I liked it even more than the first one, which is actually quite rare (in my movie view experience at least).  The cast was great and had a huge amount of intense action. It was all I expected and I think, it exceeded my expectations so thats even better.

How about you? Did you see this movie yet? If yes, what did you think? If not, will you eventually see it when it releases on DVD/Blu-ray?