'The Expendables 2' is very much expendable

The Expendables 2 (2012)
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Nan Yu, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lliam Hemsworth, Jet Li, and Chuck Norris
Director: Simon West
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

When a CIA operative Church (Willis) forces The Expendables to escort a security expert (Yu) in a mission to recover stolen state secrets, they unexpectedly find themselves up against a Satanic group of mercenaries and their leader (Van Damme) who are persuing the same objective.

"The Expendables" was a decent homage to the action films of the 1980s and 1990s. It featured faces familiar from those days, in a story that made sense in an action-movie world kind of way.

"The Expendables 2" is a spoof of the action films of the 1980s and 1990s, and not even a good one. Its script is less of a story and more of  a string of catch-phrases and cameo appearances played more for the laughs than action and drama. Even the final showdown between the heroes and villains is played more for laughs than drama. In fact, it's such a spoof of action films that Chuck Norris's role in the film is basically a cinematic presentation of a few "Facts About Chuck Norris".

While every featured player gives the exact performance you'd expect them to give, and everyone is obviously in on the fact the movie is a spoof of action films, there's really little else here besides the aging stars that's note worthy. Average Willis, Average Schwartzenegger, Average Van Damme, Average Stallone, and Average Self-Mocking Post "Facts About Chuck Norris" Norris, all appearing in a disjointed and weakly written action comedy. Since I like all the featured actors, it's hard for me to hate this movie, but as it wore on the illogical of the story, the random way characters popped in and out of the plot, and ever-growing number of "wink-wink" moments started wearing on me.

The best thing I can say about "The Expandables 2" is that it's a far more effective spoof than anything that's ever come out of the creative team behind things like "Spyhard" and "Epic Movie"--but that's damning with faint praise, because I'm not sure it was intended to be quite as much a spoof as it turned out to be. I think it's just a badly conceived movie.

'Hostage': One of Bruce Willis' best

Hostage (2005)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Ben Foster, Jimmy Bennett, and Kevin Pollack
Director: Florent Siri
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

The sad existence of Jake Talley, a burned-out police hostage negotiator (Willis) who has retreated to life as a small-town police chief is jarred when three hapless small-time thugs decide to engage in a little home-invasion/robbery. One of them, Mars (Foster), is a through-and-through psychopath and after he kills one of the town's police officers, the situation evolves into a hostage stand-off, with the home-owner, William Smith (Pollack), and his two children at the mercy of the killer. Unfortunately, Smith has something in his possession that a powerful international cartel of criminals need badly, and they take Talley's family hostage to force him into cooperating with them so they can retrieve their property. Will Talley manage to keep control and save all the hostages?

"Hostage" is a fantastic police thriller that features excellent acting, some really nice camerawork, and a near-flawless pace. I was particularly impressed with the way Smith's secrets are revealed, and then later the way they end up spilling over into Talley's life. Along similar lines, the gradual revealing of the depths of Mars' psychopathy is also expertly played... and his final rampage should earn him the respect of Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers!

The film gets a little far-fetched toward the end--basically, I'm not sure Talley would be able to pull off the final "negotiation", even given the way he has his officers running interference for him--but I don't think it's enough to ruin it. (I was also momentarily miffed that the film ends with no revelation of who or what the distant bad guys that were pulling Smith's strings were all about... but then I decided that it really didn't matter; the story wasn't about them anyway.)

"Hostage" was one of 2005's best thrillers. Check it out if you haven't already.

What is a 'Lucky Number Slevin' anyhow?

Lucky Number Slevin (aka "The Wrong Man") (2006)
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Stanley Tucci, Lucy Liu, and Ben Kingsley
Director: Paul McGuigan
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A case of mistaken identity places Slevin Kelevra (Hartnett) squarely in the middle of a decades-old feude between two rival crimelords (Freeman and Kingsley) that's about to get very, very hot. With a quirky coroner (Liu) as his only ally, and a cop with a dark secret out to arrest him (Tucci), Slevin has three days to figure out a way to balance the mutually exclusive expectations of the criminals threatening him and stay alive in the process. The difficult situation may well be impossible, as the feared assassin Mr. Goodkat (Willis) is also in the mix, with an agenda dating back over 20 years.


When "Lucky Number Slevin" appeared in theaters in 2006, I wrote in my review of it that "it seems that Hollywood is finally making some good thrillers again" and "I can declare that the dry-spell of decent thrillers in the vein of Hitchcock is over."

I have since stepped a bit back from that optimistic position--2006 was just a very good year for the thriller genre... the Hollywood offerings quickly returned to the levels of crapitude I have come to accept as reality--but "Lucky Number Slevin" was and is a great mix of film-noir genre standards and comedy that is enhanced by sharply crafted dialogue and presented in a fabulously convoluted mystery plot. The acting is top-rate by all involved, the set design appropriately strange (reflecting Slevin's bizarre predicament), with clever use of editing, overlays, and the musical score serving only to elevate what is already good even further. While there isn't a whole lot of originality in "Lucky Number Slevin" as far as the story goes, it uses the building blocks of a film-noir story so effectively that pretty much everything works here. (In fact, "Lucky Number Slevin" reminded me more of Hitchcock at his best than countless movies that critics have labeled "Hitchcockian" over the years.)

The only complaint I have with the film is Liu's character, Lindsey. Her dinginess became a little hard to swallow after it was revealed that she was a coronor, and I didn't buy the insta-relationship between her and Slevin. I have the same problem with a number of classic suspense movies--with Hitchcock's "Notorious" and "The Trouble With Harry" being among the biggest offenders--but given that it's an element that's present in many of "Lucky Number Slevin's" filmic ancestors, it doesn't bother me any more here that it does in the others.

I think fans of Hitchcock movies and well-done crime/caper movies will find "Lucky Number Slevin" well worth their time and money.

'The Expendables' is a great action flick

The Expendables (2010)
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, David Zayas, Giselle Itie, Terry Crews, Randy Coutre, Mickey Rourke, and Charisma Carpenter
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

An elite team of mercenaries (Li, Statham, Stallone) turn down a contract to overthrow the military dictator of a small South American nation (Zayas). They change their minds when when the drug-runners who are the power-behind-the-power (Austin and Roberts) abduct the dictator's kindhearted daughter (Itie), and they set out to overthrow a government and kill every bad guy they come across--free of charge.


Forget the race-baiting self-consciously referential "Machete" that's coming out later this year. This is the film that captures the real mood and spirit of everything that was great about the explosion-laden action movies of yesteryear, without any posturing, preaching, or pandering.

Like "Predators" from earlier this summer, "The Expendables" is a throw-back movie that succeeds at what it sets out to do--to evoke the feeling of a 1980s action flick and to the movie days when men were men and every day brought another suicide mission. It does this with all the fight scenes, gunplay, car chases, and macho banter than even the most discriminating fan would want. It also does so by reviving a common 1980s villain (the corrupt CIA operative whose gone into the drug trade), by providing us lead characters who can be chivalrous when damsels are in distress, completely coldhearted and unforgiving to those who put them there, and forgiving to their friends even when they betray them.

In "The Expendables," Sylvester Stallone gathered such an array of stars--several of whom have cameos, such as Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger--that I was afraid the film would collapse under the weight of egoes vying for screentime and recognition. Thankfully, I was wrong.

Stallone, who is also the co-writer and director of the flick, retains complete control of the straight-forward action narrative in the film, with every character and actor portraying it, playing their part in the story with no allowance for star-status, past or present. It goes without saying that three of the biggest stars appearing in the film--Stallone, Statham, and Li--also get the most screen time, but the rest of the almost equally famous cast play their parts without any particular acknowledgement beyond what any other actor might get. The only exception to this is the scene featuring Willis and Schwarzenegger. While it is needed for the plot, its execution feels a little forced, with the dialogue between Stallone, Willis, and Schwarzenegger being just a little too cute and too aware that it's an exchange among movie super-stars and one-time box office rivals.


Aside from that one minor misstep, Stallone keeps the film centered around Barney Ross (played by Stallone himself) and his friend and main partner Lee Christmas (played by Statham), men of violence who nonetheless hold to a strong code of honor and chivalry that they expect everyone who works with them to obey as well. This is established in the film's first scene, and it is carried throughout, as Ross and Lee's honorable natures are ultimately the motivating factor behind every event of the film. They are a pair of cool unapologetic tough guys with the sort of strong moral center that one wishes all such tough guys had both in fiction and reality.

Technically, this is is also an excellent film. It's well-written (aside from the aforementioned scene between between Stallone, Willis, and Schwarzenegger), expertly paced and edited, with every action scene being lean, mean, and exactly what is called for in order to get maximum impact. The only drawback is that this film makes the mistake that so many other action films have done of late--they use computer graphics to add blood spatter and gore to scenes. Unfortunately, it's no less obvious and fake-looking here than it was in the low-budget films that originated the practice, nor any better looking than in the other big-budget film I've recently seen that made use of the unfortunate practice ("MacGruber"). It's a shame really, because those obviously fake bits of CGI were very distracting during the otherwise exciting and fun climactic orgy of explosions, death, and mayhem.

Dirty cops must silence witness in '16 Blocks'

16 Blocks (2006)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Mos Def, and David Morse
Director: Richard Donner
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Broken-down, burned-out NYPD detective Jack Mosely (Willis) is given a simple assignment: Escort a prisoner, Eddie Bunker (Def), sixteen blocks from the police station holding-tank to the courthouse so he testify before a Grand Jury. The prisoner has to be there by 10am, because if he isn't, the Grand Jury is dismissed and the prosecutor's case will fall apart. But even in New York traffic, two hours to cover sixteen blocks should be easy, right? Well, not if the witness's testimony is going to expose police corruption reaching from the streets to highest pinnacle of power within the NYPD.


"16 Blocks" is, basically, a lesser version of the story told in the classic movie "The Gauntlet". Here, like in that film, a cop who is just marking time until retirement manages to summon up whatever spark first inspired him to join the police and do the right thing against ever-increasing odds; a major difference between the Eastwood character in "The Gauntlet" and Mosely is that he is aware that other cops are trying to kill his charge from the outset, and that this is what sparks his desire to overcome in the first place. Another difference is that while the witness in "The Gauntlet" was annoying, Sandra Locke's character at least had some likable qualities to her. There is nothing particularly likable about the character played by Mos Def in "16 Blocks"--not even his oft-stated dream to leave crime behind and become a baker, because it never once rings true--and his nonstop babbling and truly obnoxious voice becomes nerve-grating more than once. Finally, there is a difference in intensity... in "The Gauntlet", here's a sense of ever-increasing danger and pressure. That never occurs here... the film reaches a level a few minutes in and stays there, despite the many shoot-outs and close calls between Mosely and his pursuers.

Bruce Willis gives a great performance as a man who is way past his prime and in over his head; there are several times where his facial expressions say more than any lines of dialogue could. Unfortunately, his co-star, Def, is so annoying that I found myself wishing someone would shoot his character now. Willis also has the problem that he's in a movie that doesn't seem to go anywhere. There's a great build-up to the moment when assassins take a shot at Bunker, and it feels like the film will get even tenser when Mosely realizes that his old partner (Morse) and other detectives that seem to come to his aid are actually part of the plot to silence the witness... but instead the momentum seems to stall. The film coasts through the roughly one-and-three-quarter hours of real-time as Mosely struggles to deliver Bunker to the courthouse alive, eventually coming to a sputtering halt at its ending, whether the original one, or the "shocking" alternate ending included on the DVD release.

"16 Blocks" had a lot of potential, but it never really lives up to its promise; like its hero, it seems to be coasting, but unlike the hero, it never finds its "spark" or redemption. It is a film that any big time Bruce Willis fan should check out--he is quite good in it. The rest of us are probably better off picking up a copy of "The Gauntlet" if we haven't seen it yet.

'Moonlighting' turns 25

Moonlighting: The Pilot Episode (1985)
Starring: Cybill Shepherd, Bruce Willis and Robert Ellenstein
Director: Robert Butler
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

After she left penniless by a crooked business manager, former model Maddie Hayes (Shepherd) attempts to recoup a little of her lost fortune by liquidating companies she still owns, among them a money-losing detective agency run by David Addison (Willis). Addison tries to persuade her that the detective agency can make money and ends up involving her in a case that involves a broken wristwatch that people are willing to kill to obtain.



This year, it's exactly 25 years since "Moonlighting" debuted on American television, turning Bruce Willis from an obscure struggling actor into a star almost overnight. It was almost a replay of the good fortune Peirce Brosnan enjoyed when his first starring role was in "Remington Steele", a show to which "Moonlighting owes a lot, not surprising given that it was created by one of "Remington Steele"'s co-creators.

Like "Remington Steele," "Moonlighting" tried to evoke the glamor and comedic tone of comedies from the 1930s and 1940s starring the likes of William Powell & Myrna Loy and Cary Grant & Katherine Hepburn.

As far as capturing the look and feel of classic romantic/screwball comedies (while updating it for the 1980s), "Moonlighting" was only occasionally successful at it whereas "Remington Steele" hit every single note with perfect pitch until losing its way at the very end of the series. The biggest strength of the latter series was the fact that Remington Steele and Laura Holt were likable characters played by charming actors,while "Moonlighting"'s was fronted by charming actors playing the very unlikeable David Addison and the shrewish Maddie Hayes.

The personality defects of the lead characters in "Moonlighting" are present from this very first pilot episode. David annoying and obnoxious with very little in the charm department to make up for his behavior, while Maddie spends much of her time bitching for the sake of bitching. As the series wore on, it didn't improve much, making some episodes a little hard to sit through. It doesn't help matters that I don't feel like Willis and Shepherd ever really connect on screen. There simply isn't that Powell/Loy, Grant/Hepburn or Brosnan/Zimbalist chemistry; Willis and Shepherd are good individually, but their pairing does not add up to something great.

This pilot, however, shows that even if "Moonlighting" didn't quite manage to live up to its models, it was still lots of fun when it was its best. Shepherd is pretty and looks great in anything she wears--she actually was a retired model who turned to acting in real life--and Willis is quite funny in the role of David, something he never managed to consistently be in anything else he appeared in; when Willis turned to action films with comedic touches, he saved his career. The plot is a fast-paced and the mystery engaging.

While "Moonlighting" may not have been as good as the films it emulated (or even rival series "Remington Steele") it still ranks among both the best detective shows and the best comedies to grace the small screen. The pilot is a great introduction to the series that even works on its own as a stand-alone movie. It's worth checking out if you missed it Back In the Day.

'The Last Boy Scout' is decent Buddy Flick

The Last Boy Scout (1991)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Danielle Harris, Noble Willingham, Bruce McGill, and Halle Berry
Director: Tony Scott
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Privvate detective Joe Hallenbeck (Willis) and his partner Mike (McGill) are hired to protect a stripper named Cory (Berry). When Mike is murdered in a car-bombing, and Cory is gunned down in the street, Joe teams up with Corey's boyfriend, a former pro-football player named Dix (Wayans) to uncover the reasons behind the killings. What they discover is that there is deep-seated corruption that infests both local politics and professional sports... and that the deaths of Mike and Corey are only the beginning.


"The Last Boy Scout" is a decent action movie with a script that has better dialogue than most, a superb cast, and a nice selection of subplots that humanize our heroes without slowing down the movie. Fans of the principle stars--Willis and Wayans--will enjoy their performances in this movie. General action fans should find it to their liking as well.

Given the love Hollywood has for sequels, I'm a bit surprised that we didn't get "The Last Boy Scout 2". The end of the film seems to beg for one, and it would be a lot easier to pull off than the sequels to "Die Hard".

Double Feature: Tales of Jimmy the Tulip

The Whole Nine Yards (2000)
Starring: Matthew Perry, Bruce Willis, Amanda Peet, Natasha Henstridge, Roseanna Arquette, Michael Clarke Duncan and Kevin Pollack
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When Oz (Perry), a hapless nice-guy dentist caught in a loveless marriage to an uber-bitch wife (Arquette), befriends his new next door neighbor Jimmy (Willis), his life is transformed overnight. Suddenly, he is surrounded by killers, femme fatales, and revenge-hungry Hungarian gangsters.


"The Whole Nine Yards" is a movie that's part screwball comedy, part romantic comedy, part heist story, part crime drama, and a whole lot of hilarity. It's a movie full of likable characters with a charming air about it that reminded me of a number of comedies or light-hearted mysteries from the 1930s and 1940s (such as "Slightly Honorable", "Half a Sinner", "His Girl Friday", and "Bringing Up Baby", even if the stakes and body count are far higher here than in any of those movies). Matthew Perry's performance in particular reminded me of the hapless,clumsy heroes featured in those sorts of movies. I can't think of anyone who has been able to be goofy and do pratfall after pratfall yet still maintain a sort of dignity like Perry does in this film since Cary Grant.

The fun of this movie is found partly in its twisting and turning story--which sees two major, very well executed major reversals of audience expectations without losing even a tiny of momentum of as it keeps building toward not one but two dramatic and well-done endings--but also in its cast of charming characters presented by perfectly cast actors.

Bruce Willis gives perhaps the most versatile and surprising performance in the entire movie. He plays Jimmy the Tulip, a self-centered, greedy contract killer and Willis projects exactly the sort of menace that you'd expect such a character to exude. At the same time--literally, in more than one scene--he also projects a level of charm and likability that makes you wish he was your next door neighbor. Amanda Peet's character is much the same; she plays the most likable and lovable sociopath I've ever seen in any movie. Their casual, jovial approach to the business of murder is offset by the calm grace of Natasha Henstridge who plays a classic femme fatale. (And, of course, Matthew Perry's Everyman character provies a solid foundation for the other performances, as he stumbles and pratfalls his way through the ever-thickening and deadly plot while giving voice to the sense of horror and outrage the audience should be feeling if they weren't so busy laughing.)

This a very cool comedy that features a stellar cast at their best. I recommend it highly. (And I think I may have to reevaluate my opinion of Matthew Perry. I'd only ever seen him before in the two or three episodes of "Friends" I'd tried to sit through. He's obviously far more talented than anything that was on display there.)



The Whole Ten Yards (2004)
Starring: Matthew Perry, Bruce Willis, Amanda Peet, Kevin Pollack, Natasha Henstridge, and Tasha Smith
Director: Howard Deutch
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Two years after successfully hoodwinking organized crime and authorities to let murderous lovebirds Jimmy and Jill (Willis and Peet), the past comes back to haunt nebbish dentist Oz (Perry) and his gun moll wife (Henstridge) when she is kidnapped by Hungarian gangsters in search of revenge. Oz turns to Jimmy for help, making a bad situation worse and starting a series of events that grow increasingly strange and evermore deadly.


"The Whole Ten Yards" is a clumsily named sequel to one of the best mob comedies ever filmed. It's also so clumsily executed that it will be hard to follow if you haven't seen the film it's a sequel to, "The Whole Nine Yards", because it assumes complete knowledge of the main characters and the events that brought them together in the first place.

Unfortunately, if you saw "The Whole Nine Yards", all you'll take a way from this movie is disappointment. The jokes are mostly lame, the charming sides of Perry, Willis' and Peet's characters that made the first movie so enjoyable is nowhere to be seen here--and even Perry's physical comedy and spittakes seem tired and forced here. Worse, the suspense that mixed easily with the comedy in the original film has been replaced with badly mounted attempts at absurd humor. (Perhaps these differences are the mark of a film helmed by a talented director versus one that isn't?)

Rating a very low 4, "The Whole Ten Yards" is a great disappointment considering the excellence of the film it follows and the great cast that reprised their parts that has nothing of what made the first movie worth watching (including Amanda Peet's naked breasts).

'Perfect Stranger' should remain unknown

Perfect Stranger (2007)
Starring: Halle Berry, Giovanni Ribisi, and Bruce Willis
Director: James Foley
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

An investigative reporter (Berry) goes undercover at a top ad agency to prove that its face man Harrison Hill (Willis) murdered her best friend. But can the truth be discoverd when the investigation is mired in hidden agendas?


"Perfect Strangers" is a thriller that is completely devoid of tension, partly because the viewer is never convinced that the supposed murderer is all that dangerous and partly because we're not given a reason to like any of the characters enough to care whether they too get poisoned with an overdose of belladonna.

To add insult to injury, the films lazily written--to the point where every character on screen even sounds alike--and it's got one of those annoying, unnessecary twist-endings that in a desperate attempt to breathe some life and excitement into the film only manages to underscore how haphazard and badly executed it is. (I will grant that it's an ending better supported by what has gone before than in other films, but it's still false, hollow and a bit of a cheat. It's made more of a cheat because of the audience-manipulating flashbacks that appear throughout the film; I despise this movie even more for its refusal to play fair with the viewer and provide ligitimate clues so we can "play along" in solving the mystery at its core and instead feeding us distortions.

'Die Hard' brings explosions to Christmas

Die Hard (1988)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman and Bonnie Bedelia
Director: John McTiernan
Steve's Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Hardboiled New York City cop John McClaine (Willis) is struggling to cope with the long-distance relationship his marriage has become since his wife (Bedelia) took a job at the offices of a Japanese company in California. He travels west for Christmas Eve and the company's Christmas party, but soon finds himself in a situation far more explosive than his marriage will ever be: A group of terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Rickman) has taken the company executives (along with John's wife) and are threatening to kill them one by one unless a series of rediculous demands are met. With much more than his marriage at stake, John sets about defeating the terrorists single-handedly... but will he be fast (and deadly) enough to stop Hans Gruber's real master plan?


"Die Hard" is perhaps the perfect "hero with no way out, surrounded and outnumered by bad guys, and the situation keeps going from bad to worse"-movie. The script careens toward the film's explosive climax at breakneck pace from the very beginning, and yet it still manages to work in enough characterizations, subplots, and reversals that the viewer is invested in the characters and kept guessing how things might turn out up to the very end.

Rickman and Willis are excellent as the film's coldhearted villian and very vulnerable hero--unlike the heroes protrayed by the likes of Schwarznegger and Segal, Willis' John McClaine actually bleeds when hit, shot, or cut--and a fantastic supporting cast lets them both shine ever brighter. The cat-and-mouse game between McClaine and Gruber should stand as one of the greatest battles of wits and weapons in cinematic history.

If you haven't seen "Die Hard," add it to you list of Christmas viewing. At the very least, you'll be able to say that no matter how bad getting together with the relatives is. At least none of them are shooting up the Christmas tree with uzis or blowing up skyscrapers with all of you still inside.