Movie: The Expendables
Written and directed by Sylvester Stallone. This is a movie starring a range of stars from old 80’s and 90’s action movies, with ridiculous character names: Jason Statham as Lee Christmas, Jet Li as Yin Yang, Randy Couture as Toll Road, Dolph Lundgren as Gunnar Jensen, Terry Crews as Hale Caesar, Mickey Rourke as Tool, and Bruce Willis as “Mr. Church”, plus a bonus Arnold Schwarzenegger as “Trench”.
Statham is the only actor from a more modern genre of action films, and manages to hold his own with the veterans quite well, while staying with his usual style of action. Wikipedia suggests that others were approached but chose not to participate.
I felt the movie was too slow-moving in its setup. The attempts to add depth to the characters were variously laughable and a little painful to watch (eg. Mickey Rourke, whose character could easily have been omitted from the film), and – while some of the action scenes were indeed impressive – the film felt much too long for what it was.
If you’re a die-hard (excuse the pun) fan of action movies, then you’ll welcome the opportunity to watch an action film made with values from years gone by, but if you’re looking for any sort of complexity, you’ll want to look further afield.