Last year when I went to an advanced screening of Fruitvale Station, I spoke to director Ryan Coogler and asked him what his next project was. When he replied, "A boxing movie," I thought little of it. Cut to a few months later when it's announced that Coogler's boxing movie is actually Creed, a spinoff/sequel to the fucking Rocky franchise and I basically start frothing at the mouth with excitement.
Coogler's Fruitvale star and the future Human Torch Michael B. Jordan will play the grandson to Apollo Creed, who's become a talented boxer in his own right. Of course he recruits the Italian Stallion to serve as his trainer, effectively turning Rocky into the new Mickey. If we're really lucky, than IMDb is correct and Jordan's character name really is Adonis Creed. Sometimes the world can be a marvelous place.
The project has been in development for a while and last month they even recruited some real life boxers to play Creed's opponents. Now real life actress Tessa Thompson has joined the cast in an unspecified role that we can safely assume is Adonis's love interest. I wasn't the biggest fan of Thompson back in her Veronica Mars days, but I hear lots of good things about her work in both Selma and Dear White People.
Mostly I'm just happy that we're getting closer to this movie actually existing.
The fourth entry, titled John Rambo or simply Rambo depending upon which version of the Blu-ray you're watching, is most notable for being the least Rambo of all the Rambo movies. There aren't many hallmarks of this franchise but the most recognizable of them, namely a scene in which Rambo slowly takes out a group of enemies in an enclosed space one at a time as well as the presence of an on-the-nose power ballad over the closing credits, are conspicuously absent in this (perhaps) final go around. It's therefore hard not to walk away from this movie feeling like Rambo/Stallone accidentally wandered into some semi-generic action film. Julie Benz will try your patience as she spends most of the first half of the film blandly monologuing, although every time her dickhead fiance wanders into frame the potential for unintentional comedy skyrockets. (I'm looking at you, awkwardly staged boat scene.) And Stallone's desire to legitimately educate the audience about the plight of the Burmese people while simultaneously portraying the military as virtual caricatures of evil is so blunt that it's kind of astounding. It's as if he's trying overly hard to justify the violence that Rambo will visit upon these bastards later on. But stick around because the last 20 minutes is a glorious melee of CG blood and guts as Rambo rips throats, cuts off heads and shoots guys so severely that they simply explode into a completely liquid state. It's awesome.
I'm really happy with the say this whole revisitation played out, as it gave me the chance to honestly re-evaulate the Rambo franchise for the first time in a decade. I discovered that Rambo III was much better than it gets credit for, while First Blood Part II is kind of an overhyped snore. I'm can't wait to dig into the next franchise on our docket, Terminator.
A note on this week's podcast: We spend a bunch of time talking about Marvel's plans for Avengers 3 and beyond, name the idea that most of the current Avengers may not actually appear in that film and the possibility of Sony, in a fit of desperation, finally allowing Spider-Man to play in the Avengers sandbox. As I was posting this podcast last night the news broke concerning Robert Downey Jr's deal to appear in Captain America 3, signaling the beginning of Marvel's Civil War storyline. I'll have more thoughts about this later, but I stand by everything we talked about in the podcast and I think our positions are pretty fairly validated by this latest development.
Also, fair warning: The section where we watch 80's sitcoms of our youth is a little uneven from an audio perspective. The TV audio is a little quiet and our reactions are pretty loud. Be glad that I edited that section down a bit, particularly the moment from the Small Wonder pilot where the son gropes his robot sister and says, "She even feels like a girl," which literally sent us screaming out of the room in horror. It's a wonder we didn't break the microphones.
Next Week: Brad Pitt drives a tank in Fury and hopefully also The Terminator.
History is not always kind to movies. Particularly in the case of franchises, if a movie delivers a dramatic departure from the audience's expectations then the audience can turn on a film that's actually pretty good in its own right, thus souring the film for future generations based on reputation alone. I now believe Rambo III to be just such a movie. I also believe that anyone who tells you that Rambo II is the best of the franchise is functionally braindead.
The third entry in the Rambo series is far better than I remember it being, utilizing a clever role reversal by essentially having Stallone's musclebound super-soldier team up with the Soviet Union's version of the Viet Cong in Afghanistan while also delivering some of the best action in the franchise to date. I suspect that the long sections where Stallone halts the story to educate Americans as to the plight of the noble Afghan freedom fighters turned off audiences who just wanted to see Rambo stab the shit out of some Russians, but viewed through the lens of 2014 the film serves as a stark reminder that once upon a time our government considered the mujahideen to be heroes as opposed to terrorists.
Also, at one point Stallone sets his own spleen on fire.
Episode 33 of the podcast has some Rambo III talk at the end, but is mostly devoted to a discussion of whether or not William Shatner should return to the role of James T. Kirk in the next Star Trek film and the future of that franchise in general. Bart and I also chat at length about Netflix's upcoming sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and how the theatrical landscape continues to shift as theater owners refuse to screen the film in IMAX theaters. Taken alongside the announcement that Netflix has signed Adam Sandler to a four picture deal, it's hard not wonder how the one-time DVD rental service will continue to impact both the development and distribution process going forward. This episode marks a bit of a shift in the podcast's overall structure, focusing more on what's happening in Hollywood this week than just about the particular movie we screened. I'm hoping to continue down that same path going forward.
Next Week: Our Rambo Rewatch comes to a bloody, bloody end with Rambo.
We've now officially past the halfway mark of our Epic Rambo Rewatch, which is the part where I'm left scratching my head wondering, "Why were these movies so popular?" As we noted in last week's conversation about First Blood, when people think about the character of Rambo, they're usually thinking about him from Rambo: First Blood Part II. And yet, this Rambo is kind of...boring. Stallone is at his best when he's allowed to be just a touch goofy, but here Rambo has become an emotionless cypher of destruction, morosely slaughtering dozens of faceless Vietnamese and Soviet soldiers in his attempt to rescue a group of American POWs. At least in the first installment Rambo was dealing with some pretty serious emotional trauma, which made his violent behavior kind of fascinating. Now he's basically a killer robot, which is ironic considering the movie's clear-cut hatred of technology and rigid systems. Is this really what we wanted from our action heroes in the 80's? All righteous fury and no semblance of humanity?
And while Rambo is an absolute void of personality, the same can be said of the direction by George Cosmatos. Sure, you've got plenty of combat, chase sequences and machismo, but it's all fairly perfunctory with no trace of any real joy or style. Even the part where Rambo obliterates an enemy soldier with his one of those exploding arrowheads feels somehow unremarkable, which might be the film's single biggest crime. There's no actual tension to any of the action, nor do you ever emotionally invest in Rambo's need to liberate his fellow soldiers. It's almost hard to believe that this is the same guy who directed Tombstone. It's very easy to believe that this is the same guy who directed Cobra.
In our latest podcast, Bart and I delve into our disappointment over one of Stallone's signature roles while simultaneously discovering the joy that is Charles Napier's rich and varied filmography. We also question the likelihood of Ryan Reynolds' long delayed Deadpool movie, chuckle at the cast of Police Academy fending off lava-spewing giant spiders and the marvel at the possibility that William Shatner's greatest role might in fact be Denny Crane.
I've been hankering to revisit both of Stallone's most successful franchises, Rocky and Rambo, for quite some time. I'm intimately familiar with his pugilistic masterpiece, but amazingly I've only seen each of the Rambo films a single time each. Bart has only seen one film all the way through. That situation is simply untenable.
Thus we've begun to reexamine this bloody series starting with First Blood, which I remember as being easily the best movie in the series. When you think of Rambo, most people think of the character's second incarnation: a shirtless, headband clad uber-soldier cutting a swath of righteous destruction through an enemy jungle. (Either that or you think of this scene from UHF or most of Hot Shots Part Deux.) It's easy to forget that the first entry in the series is actually a harrowing nightmare of PTSD-fueled violence set in small town in Oregon, or that the film has quite a bit to say about society's mistreatment of military veterans.
But there's also a lot of Stallone being a total badass, so that's what audience chose to focus on.
In our latest episode, Bart and I discuss Rambo's gritty origins, determine whether Brian Dennehy is a complete dick and ponder whether or not Rambo should have died in the end as originally intended. We also chat about Matt Damon's imminent return to the Bourne franchise, speculate as to a future King Kong/Godzilla face off and discover Google's spectacularly unflattering celebrity profile pics.
Despite its surprising lack of terribleness, Expendables 3 looks to be a serious disappointment at the box office. And yet somehow plans continue for an all-female spinoff called (I shit you not) The Expendabelles. The last few months it's only existed as a vague idea and a very silly title, but now there appears to be some form of a script and so offers are being made to ladies with a history of cinematic ass-kickery.
Unsurprisingly the first offer went out to Sigourney Weaver and thankfully she turned it down. Frankly I'm not all that surprised, especially in light of the revelation that the script revolves around a team of mercenary women who are forced to infiltrate the island lair of maniacal villain by posing as high priced call girls. Sigourney Weaver is way to classy for that bullshit. Besides, she's gonna be involved in the next 27 Avatar films that James Cameron has planned, so it's hardly as if she needs the paycheck.
In the end I expect that, much like the testosterone-y version, we'll get a mix of real actresses and some MMA types. Gina Carano seems like a lock and I wouldn't be surprised to see Rhonda Rousey make another appearance, despite being the weakest link of the third entry. Michelle Rodriguez, Kate Beckinsale, Milla Jovovich, Katee Sackoff and Lucy Liu are all likely candidates, but they're definitely going to need a big, Stallone-esque name to anchor this thing and there simply aren't a lot of options. Linda Hamilton is probably a good fit, as is Jamie Lee Curtis or Daryl Hannah. I'm not sure if Pam Grier or Gena Davis are still combat ready, but I'd love to seem them show up in some capacity. And hey, what's Brigitte Nielson up to these days?
Then again, if they can't inject some serious star power into this thing I wouldn't be surprised to see it simply fade away. That's probably for the best, as it took Stallone three tries to figure out how to make these movies right. I suspect a female version wouldn't get quite so many chances.
My love of all things Stallone is pure, eternal and well documented. Thusly, I have subjected myself to both The Expendables and The Expendables 2, movies that sound brilliant on paper yet fall completely flat in execution. It's such a disappointment, so much so that I have stupidly revisited each film, thinking they can't be as bad as I remember. But they are that bad, and then some. These are movies whose idea of entertainment is a collection of tedious, poorly shot action sequences and awkward, forced comedic banter between guys who have trouble speaking coherent sentences. Sure, it's fun to get guys like Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger all on screen together, but you also have to give them something interesting to do, something more than standing around shooting off-screen villains and regurgitating 20 year old catchphrases. Chuck Norris is the most egregious example of this mindset: his mere presence in Expendables 2 elicits chuckles, but the guy is too old to actually do any real ass-kicking. Instead he just sort of meanders around, has a beard, delivers some plot information and then wanders off. Such a waste.
Expendables 3 finally learns from the mistakes of its predecessors. Newcomers Antonio Banderas, Wesley Snipes, Kelsey Grammar, Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson all inject a sense of pure, uncut fun that the franchise has been sorely lacking. Snipes owns the movie's opening 20 minutes, so much so that I was sad that he was barely present in the film's second half. But that's okay, because as Snipes fades into the background, Banderas gets his time to shine impossibly bright. He's charming and funny and sad and a badass on top of everything. Grammer and Ford each have smaller roles but they both have a couple of killer moments, while Gibson channels his particular brand of crazy into a great maniacal villain. Conrad Stonebanks plays like a darker, twisted version of Martin Riggs without ever resorting to any ham-fisted references, as opposed to Schwarzenegger who drops not one, but two different variations on "Get to the choppah!" There's also a younger crew of new Expendables, but they seemingly exist solely to make the older Expendables look more awesome. This goal is successfully achieved through wooden acting and lack of personality. Seriously, Rhonda Rousey makes Dolph Lundgren look like Lawrence Olivier.
This is what The Expendables always should have been and it's a shame that it took three full movies before they figured it out. At this point most people have long since given up on this 80's action-star revival showcase and I can't blame them. As I said, the first two movies are a downright chore to sit through. But whether you've turned your back on the Expendables or never really bothered with them to begin with, you should give the third entry a shot. It's still not great filmmaking, (I'm more than a little worried that Patrick Hughes is taking the reins on the American remake of The Raid) but it's remarkably entertaining and it blows some stuff up. At the end of the day, that's all I ever wanted.
Unlike myself, Bart and Jamie had never seen an Expendables movie before, but that didn't stop us from podcasting the shit out of this one. We shook up the format this time around and moved the current events stuff to the top of the agenda for those of you who want to hear us memorialize Robin Williams or pontificate about Aquaman and DC's upcoming TV slate without risking any Expendables spoilers before you get a chance to see the movie. I think we'll give it a few weeks to see how it feels. The only thing we failed to talk about regarding Expendables is the incredible and casual revelation at the end of the film that Schwarzenegger and Jet Li are actually lovers. I think that also implies that Li and Lundgren were lovers in the first film? Either way, it's amazing.
My love of all things Stallone is boundless and Over The Top was the last of his really goofy 80's movies that had somehow slipped through my fingers. I dipped into this pool earlier in the year with the incredible Cobra, which is pretty much pure, uncut Stallone action badassery. But Over The Top is a different beast entirely. I was having dinner with my friends Lucy and Jason one night and when I mentioned that I still hadn't seem Stallone's arm wrestling opus, well, the debate as to what we should watch that night came to an abrupt halt.
I'll admit that at first, I was utterly confused as to why this particular movie would be fondly remembered by anyone. Stallone plays a truck driver who reunites with the rich, spoiled son he's never met and takes him on a road trip in his big rig to see the boy's mother who's suffering from some ill-defined heart ailment, but just as father and son begin to bond over the sublime art of arm wrestling, the boy's mother dies suddenly dies and there's a custody argument between Stallone and the kid's wealthy grandfather played by Robert Loggia and SNOOOOOOOOORE.
Sure, there's great 80's music from Giorgio Moroder and plenty of unintentional comedy to found, like the fact that nobody, including the screenwriter, seems to know if Stallone's character is named Hawk or Hawks. (He identifies himself as both throughout the film, and it's never clear that one is a nickname.) And that kid...yikes. This goes on for a full hour. Then, just when I was starting to lament the serious lack of arm wrestling in this arm wrestling movie, Stallone finally drives into Vegas for the International Arm Wrestling Championship.
That's when things get AMAZING.
Holy shit you guys. The last 30 minutes of this movie are so incredibly, well, OVER THE TOP, that I simply can't describe it to you. There are no words to express this level of crazy. The finalists are all introduced via reality TV-style interviews straight to camera. Each one looks like a cartoon character and behaves accordingly. Seriously, one guy is named Mad Dog and chugs a bottle of motor oil right before competing. The tournament is staged with a level of pomp and fervor that makes Rocky look like a junior high wrestling match. And in case you're ever unclear on the rules of the competition, the tournament announcer repeats them no less than a dozen times. It's utterly astounding. The only thing missing is the moment when Stallone literally snaps his final opponent's arm in two pieces and I honestly still can't believe they didn't go there. The disparity between the first 60 minutes and the last 30 minutes is so intense that while I plan on buying this movie immediately, (it's also streaming on Amazon!) I have no plans to watch the first hour ever again. I will, however, watch the last half hour on a loop for all eternity.
Also, Jason put forth the theory that Stallone's Lincoln Hawk(s) is secretly gay, and once he said it out loud I instantly knew that there could be no other proper reading of that character. He left his wife and son under mysterious circumstances, his rich father-in-law does not approve of his lifestyle, and he has no love interest in the movie.
Besides, just look at that shirt!
--------------------------------------- Title: Over The Top Director: Manahem Golan Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Robert Loggia, Susan Blakely, Rick Zumwalt, David Mendenhall Year Of Release: 1987 Viewing Method: DVD
On my first day of high school, I met some of my best friends. There were about seven guys with names like Heats, Macky, Touchdown and Stoner (who, to my knowledge, has never smoked weed) and luckily for me we liked all the same nerdy stuff. Sure, I favored Star Trek while they were of the Dungeons & Dragons persuasion, but we quickly bonded over stuff like Monty Python and Mystery Science Theater 3000. While some of us played sports (football even!) and others did speech and debate, we all ended up spending the majority of our free time in the AV offices where there were movies to be watched, Snoods to be played, and candies to be eaten. We've all remained friends over the years and try to get together around holidays when most of us find ourselves back in Boston.
Now that we're all entering our thirties, we've officially entered the phase of our lives where weddings are a common occurrence. I was the first of us to get married and I was fortunate enough to have all the guys in attendance. The next two, Rob and Cochran are each getting married in the next few months and hilariously enough both are marrying girls who are old college friends of mine. (I get to claim some credit for a number of relationships within my various overlapping friendship groups, but then again we've always been a bit incestuous in that way.) I'll actually be officiating Rob's wedding in New York, while Cochran is having a small family-only ceremony on the Cape with a big party for friends in L.A. on Halloween weekend. Both guys planned out weekend bachelor trips, but my limited time off from work meant I could only attend one. Since I probably won't be able to fly out to L.A. in October, I decided to go to Cochran's bachelor weekend in New Orleans.
It was only my second time in the city; it's where my wife grew up before moving to Houston, so her family now spends alternating Christmases there. Last December was my first chance to come along for the ride. It was a big deal for Jamie because, while I've had plenty of opportunities to show her my hometown and all my favorite places in Boston, she's never had the reciprocal opportunity to do the same in New Orleans. We were there for about a week and visited a number of different places (mostly delicious restaurants), which was just enough experience to give me the vaguest sense of bearings for my return trip. This time, as opposed to being with my wife and my in-laws, I was with a group of sixteen guys, most of whom were Cochran's Stanford friends that I'd never met before. But there were a few of the old high school gang too and the weekend was a fucking blast. I managed to pace myself remarkably well - I never got stupid drunk despite constantly having alcohol in my hand. (There are no open container laws in New Orleans, a concept that ruins me for other cities.) There were plenty of po' boys, gators and, of course, beads. And somehow I managed to squeeze in four action movies. It seemed like the appropriate Dude Response.
COBRA
"When this is over I'd kill for some...gummi bears."
My weekend started with a 7 AM flight out of Boston on Friday morning. (Fortunately I live very close to the airport.) The first leg of my trip would take me to Nashville where I'd have a three hour layover, but I resolved myself to knocking this first movie out before I got there. So I settled in at my gate with an orange juice and a breakfast burrito, pulled out my iPad and started the Sylvester Stallone shoot 'em up, Cobra.
Back in high school, a number of us made movies as our final senior projects. One of them was an action movie starring both soon-to-be-grooms, cleverly told from the perspectives of both the cop (Rob) and the criminal (Cochran). It was full of chase scenes, fist fights and, of course, a big shootout in a warehouse. (My dad was a very good sport about letting us shoot at his offices.) We were emulating the action movies we grew up on, where one lone cop would dish out his own justice, the system be damned. Cobra might be the purest distillation of that concept.
Stallone plays Cobra, a one man wrecking crew of a police officer who always wears all black, chews on an unlit match, and isn't afraid to take on a mad bomber in a grocery store single-handed. The guy is fearless, and he doesn't care about the rules of the civilized world. As the poster says, "Crime is a disease. [He's] the cure." When a deranged cult of wackos, who the police department hilariously believes to be one guy they call The Night Slasher, starts to attack women all over the city, Cobra wants on the case. Eventually a witness, 80's stalwart Brigitte Nielson, comes forward and is attacked and it's up to Cobra to protect her and bring down the Night Slasher once and for all.
I fucking love Stallone in all his forms, but that late 70's/early 80's era is something special. While the Rocky movies are all kind of amazing in their own way (Rocky V is amazing in how terrible it is) and the Rambo movies are probably the most reductive, indulgent films of that era, I have a special soft spot for stuff like Tango & Cash. Cobra, on the other hand, was always something of a mystery to me. It's not a film that anyone really talks about and the only reason I even knew it existed in the first place was because the poster hangs on Judge Reinhold's wall in Beverly Hills Cop II, the symbol of Billy Rosewood's desire to be a "shoot first, ask questions later," take-charge kind of cop. Now I see why.
Cobra is basically a walking collection of cop/action movie cliches, from his awesome car and his loner mentality to his angry captain and his wise-cracking partner. Actually, Stallone and Reni Santoni (Poppy from Seinfeld) have a kind of adorable chemistry together and I would've loved to watch another dozen movies starring the perrenial badass and his snack food obsessed sidekick. This is right in the sweet spot of Brigitte Nielsen's career, right between Rocky IV and Beverly Hills Cop II, but I'll admit that when she first came on screen, I barely recognized her. That's probably because she had some big 80's hair going on as opposed to her infamous bleach blonde crew cut. I've never understood Nielsen's appeal, but here I get it; despite her sort of inherent awkwardness, this is easily the sexiest I've ever seen her. Stallone is credited with adapting the screenplay from a novel by Paula Gosling, and there's really very little to it. The plot is paper thin but that's almost besides the point. The story is really just a means of getting from one car chase/fight scene/shoot-out to the next and most of them do not disappoint. The final battle, which includes dozens of evil bikers who chase our heroes into an old foundry, is pretty boilerplate stuff but well executed, culminating in Stallone killing the cult leader after not one, not two, but THREE quippy one-liners, followed by the revelation that Cobra's real name is Marion.
Perfection.
I finished the movie, landed in Nashville, and proceeded to spend the next three hours drinking at the first bar I could find. Most of the guys had gotten into New Orleans the previous day and I'd be the last to arrive, so I figured I had some catching up to do
It was 9 AM. I cleaned them out of Jameson.
I landed in New Orleans with a good buzz going, dropped my stuff at the hotel and met up with the boys on Bourbon St, where Cochran was haggling over the price of tickets for a fanboat ride to see gators the next day. There was a light rain, but it was also humid as hell so we didn't mind. We wandered into a series of bars, including one with two old guys playing guitar who claimed to not know any songs by the Doobie Brothers. We were skeptical.
We swung by the infamous Cafe Du Monde for beignets beneath mountains of powdered sugar, then headed for the hotel. By then the rain had really started coming down, so we were pretty much soaked to the bone by the time we got back. The hotel included a dinner buffet and three free drinks every night, so we filled up on food and booze then laid our clothes out to dry before heading for the rooftop pool. Now that it had stopped raining, the night had turned lovely and an early evening hot tub and beers was just what we needed before rolling out for the night.
We headed back to Bourbon Street which, at night, is basically like the Las Vegas Strip of the south. The streets were choked with crowds of people, each with a fistful of alcohol, beads or both. The music was thumping, the drunks were staggering, and there was a bachelor or bachelorette party approximately every 100 feet. It was a lot of fun and, needless to say, very different from when I visited with my in-laws.
We stumbled back into the hotel room at approximately 4:00 AM, which was precisely the time that I had woken up for my flight that morning.
EXPENDABLES 2
"I'll be back."
"You've been back enough. I'll be back."
"Yippee-ki-yay."
Everybody slept in Saturday morning, which meant we skipped breakfast and went directly to lunch at Cochon Butcher. Aside from having all sorts of incredible fresh cut meats for sale (BRING ME ALL THE BACON!) Cochon is basically the sandwich shop to end all sandwich shops. I had roasted porchetta on ciabatta with braised mustard greens, garlic aioli and provolone cheese and it was nothing short of miraculous. And let's not forget that pancetta mac & cheese! There wasn't a lot of seating at Cochon so we walked down the street and ate on this weird abandoned loading dock.
We walked through the city for a bit until we discovered a bar/arcade and simply had to stop and play some games. Along with a five foot tall Jenga made of two by fours, they had mostly vintage titles including Centipede, Galaga, Street Fighter II, and even the original Tron. I pretty much set up shop in front a classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, one of my childhood favorites. Five dollars and twenty minutes later, I'd secured number four on the machine's high score list. Proof below:
Yes, my initials spell MAD.
After that it was time to see gators. All sixteen of us (and a couple of 30 racks) took a bus about 40 minutes out from the hotel and into the swamps. There we climbed onto one of those big fan boats that require you to wear protective headphones. We threw marshmallows into the water and the gators swam right up to the boat. The biggest (and oldest) was about 10 feet long and appropriately named Hercules. Our tour guide/boat captain instantly put himself into our good graces by declaring that he had no love for local heroes Peyton and Eli Manning, which is an easy way to make friends with most anyone from New England. By the time we made it back to the hotel we had a few hours to kill before the dinner buffet and another trip to Bourbon Street, so I knew this was my movie window. While some napped and others went back to the pool, I pulled out my iPad and fired up The Expendables 2.
I don't understand why this franchise isn't more awesome.
The first Expendables was downright boring and barely delivered on its premise of America's favorite old school action heroes coming together to kick some serious ass. Stallone and Dolph Lundgren are fairly entertaining, but Mickey Rourke is reduced to one admittedly amazing monologue while Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger have about four minutes of screen time between them. But most of the heavy lifting is done by the younger cast members, and while I like Jason Statham and Jet Li, I didn't watch The Expendables to see Terry Crews and Randy Couture trying to be witty. Even most of the action was a let down.
The Expendables 2 is certainly an improvement in the area of ass-kicking old guys. We've lost Rourke, but we've gained Chuck Norris as a lone wolf assassin and Jean-Claude Van Damme as a villain named (I shit you not) Vilain. That pretty much sums up the level of nuance one can expect from these movies. Willis and Schwarzenegger actually see some action this time out, but while it's nice to see them contributing to the big finale, it's depressing to see them used as the comic relief. They basically just drive around in a tiny smart car shooting faceless off-screen minions while riffing on each other's old catchphrases. (See above.) It's downright sad. Norris can't really pull of his old moves anymore considering that he's 73 years old (!) so he's relegated to sniping people from far away, which is fine I guess. The guy had the good sense to realize he's a perfect fit for this franchise and it's fun having him in the mix, even in a limited capacity. Really it's Van Damme, a guy who's always been willing to poke at his own self-image, who seems to be having the most fun here. He chews the scenery with gusto and seems to savor his own silliness. Hell, he kills Liam Hemsworth by kicking a knife into his chest. (Not really a spoiler as his early death is telegraphed from pretty much the second Hemsworth opens his mouth.) When Stallone and Van Damme finally brawl at the end, it's actually a pretty impressive display considering they have a combined age of 116.
But more than anything, these movies prove that familiar faces and decent action simply aren't enough to satisfy. If there was a remotely interesting plot driving these movies, they could be something really special. It doesn't need to be complicated, just compelling. It would also help if it wasn't painfully obvious that every scene takes place in the backwoods of some tiny European country who gave them a decent tax break to shoot there. If you're gonna have globe-trotting heroes, rule number one is to send them somewhere exciting. (see: Fast & Furious franchise)
Whether we like it or not, Expendables 3 will punch audiences in the face next summer. While there's no guarantee of a story with telling, there are promises of Wesley Snipes, Milla Jovovich, the return of Mickey Rourke, and most excitingly, Nicholas Cage. There's even a rumor that Mel Gibson might play the villain.
Jackie Chan is still a maybe. I don't blame him.
That night we went in search of some good music, so we went to a club on Frenchman street where your typical New Orleans brass band was tearing up the joint.
The group naturally got somewhat fractured as we wandered from bar to bar, but after a short detour at a dance club where one guy hilariously tried to inspire shot girls to turn their lives around, eventually we all ended up on the same balcony overlooking Bourbon and continued to drink the night away.
Iron Eagle:
"Think you can handle the music?"
Sunday was Mother's Day. A couple of us inexplicably woke up early and decided to take a walk into town. With some free time on our hands, we ended up spending the morning at the Aquarium. We saw sting rays, white gators and a crap-ton of sharks. We got back to the hotel, roused Ben awake and packed up our stuff to check out. Cochran and the remaining Stanford guys were at a local oyster house grabbing lunch before heading to the airport, so Ben, Colin, Sammy and I all bid the bachelor goodbye and went off in search of po' boys. After a lengthy walkabout, we settled on a hole in the wall joint that filled us with crawfish pie, seafood gumbo and catfish sandwiches. We soon got word that a shooting had taken place at a Mother's Day second line parade a few blocks from where we'd seen the band the previous night. It was pretty disturbing news, especially coming only a few weeks after the Boston Marathon bombing. I figured the story would probably gain a lot of attention, coming on Mother's Day. I got a few text messages from folks at home checking to make sure I was okay, but it seems like the story soon died away in the national press, which is more than a little maddening.
Colin was heading to Sacramento that afternoon, but Ben, Sammy and I switched to a cheap airport hotel for the night and so we could fly out early the next morning. There wasn't much to see out by the airport so everyone crashed for a bit and I sat down for movie number three, Iron Eagle.
I almost feel sorry for this movie.
First of all, it's a fighter jet movie that came out the same year as Top Gun, so the viewer instantly draws comparisons that Iron Eagle can't possibly hope to live up to. For shit's sake, whenever a plane blows up in this movie, it is CLEARLY a wooden model. You can see the splinters! And the film's premise is almost laughable: when an American pilot goes down behind enemy lines in a small Middle Eastern country, the Air Force won't mount a rescue mission. So instead, the pilot's 18 year old son Doug (Jason Gedrick) decides to steal a fighter jet and, with the help of Col. Chappy Sinclair (Lou Gossett Jr.), flies in to rescue his father.
The whole movie feels like some kind of insane, jingoistic reaction to the Iran hostage crisis, where 52 Americans were held against their will and the Carter administration was powerless to secure their release, while the public looked on with a growing sense of impotence. Iran is mentioned frequently throughout Iron Eagle, especially by Doug and his two best friends Reggie (Lamar from Revenge Of The Nerds) and Tony (Stiles from Teen Wolf). Reggie even makes a REAGAN COMMENT at one point. Granted Iron Eagle was released nearly five years to the day after the Iran hostages were released, but even then I'm sure there were more than a few folks who empathized with the idea of jumping into a plane to save the good guys and kill the bad guys, diplomacy be damned. I can hardly blame anyone for harboring that mentality and at least it's interesting to see a film tackle that point of view head on. The effect of major current events like the Iran hostage crisis on the stories we tell and the art we create has always been fascinating to me, which is why I'm usually drawn to movies that feel heavily influenced by 9/11, the biggest cultural watershed moment of my lifetime to date.
That said, Iron Eagle is hopelessly silly. At the beginning, Doug gets rejected by the Air Force Academy and we later learn that it's because he really only flies his best when he can use his custom, leg-mounted cassette player to fill his cockpit with truly terrible 80's music. (It's like his superpower!) He's got a ragtag collection of local kids from his flight club who help him and Chappy to secure intelligence reports and equipment (including two fighter jets) from their Air Force parents, implying that security on that particular base is something of a joke. Admittedly this is probably the single most entertaining stretch in the movie, but it also feels aimed at 12 year olds; at one point two of them set off firecrackers in a barrel to sound like gunshots and distract a platoon of officers on duty. That kinda stunt would likely get you killed in the confusion, but here's played for laughs.
It's of little wonder that the only one who returns for future Iron Eagle installments is Louis Gossett Jr. Jason Gedrick was hardly an acting powerhouse and Chappy Sinclair is unquestionably the most interesting character in the movie. This speech on the tarmac, featuring one of the worst ADR hackjobs in the history of cinema, is not only breathtaking to behold, but it proves that Gossett took this shit seriously. There are four Iron Eagle movies total, and while most seem to have been largely forgotten by history, Aces: Iron Eagle IIIsounds from its IMDb page like a must watch. That might be the most enticing plot synopsis I've ever read.
After Iron Eagle, Sammy and I decided to wander down the highway and look for a dinner option that was more appetizing than the Sonic drive-in next to our hotel. A block down the street, we found this:
Talk about the perfect way to wrap up a bachelor weekend.
Colombiana:
"Never forget where you came from."
When I made my travel arrangements, I decided I'd fly back into town on Monday and head right into the office for the afternoon so I wouldn't have to take a whole day off. The good news was that I realized the folly of this plan a few days in advance and decided to just take Monday off regardless. The bad news was that I was now stuck with a flight that left New Orleans at 5:00 AM. Thankfully I was a mere ten minute cab ride from the airport, but that still meant I needed to be awake by 3:30, which is around the time I'd been going to bed for the last two days. Needless to say, my internal clock was knocked all out of whack. I showed up at the airport so early that the TSA checkpoint to enter my gate wasn't even open yet. I didn't know such a thing was possible! After standing in line for about 30 minutes while they set up for the day, I eventually made it into the concourse, grabbed another breakfast burrito and walked onto my plane.
I had a quick stop in Atlanta before finally headed home. I had figured that, with the afternoon off, I might just wait and watch a movie at home later that day, but I don't often sleep on planes so I ended up pulling out my iPad in search of something to watch. I had loaded up Caddyshack II for exactly this contingency, but my first generation device is starting to show its age and was giving me serious playback issues. (In truth, I had some trouble with Cobra too, but this was simply unwatchable.) So I went to my reserve of backup options and, wanting to keep up the action motif, settled on Colombiana.
Colombiana is a simple tale of a little girl from Bogota who witnesses the murder of her parents at the hands of a cartel boss. The girl escapes to America where she's raised by her uncle to become a brilliant assassin who seeks revenge for the death of her family. The film stars Zoe Saladana as the assassin, Cliff Curtis as her uncle, Lennie James as the FBI agent trying bring her in, and Michael Vartan as her boyfriend who makes the audience say, "Oh hey! I remember that guy! He used to be on the teevee!"
My only impression of this movie before I saw it was the trailer, with its mantra-esque repetition of the phrase, "Never forget where you came from!" In my mind, whenever a movie goes out of its way to establish a catchphrase (AHEM Hunger Games...) I immediately think of the Colombiana trailer. Imagine my disappointment when her father says those six words in the first ten minutes and they are never spoken again. But the theme is still strong throughout the film, even if Saldana's Cataleya goes about her revenge in the dumbest, most reckless manner possible. She kills all of the cartel boss's underlings and leaves a native flower as her calling card. Except she racks up 22 kills before the FBI can figure out what her calling card even means, and as soon as the cartel gets word they immediately butcher her uncle and grandmother. So, needless to say, her plan was flawed. But she does manage some impressive kills, which is the most important part of a movie like this. The opening prison hit is both fun and impressive, plus you've gotta love any assassin who sets up her targets to die via shark attack and angry dogs.
Zoe Saldana absolutely carries the movie. Yeah, she's hot, but she's also got personality and intensity to spare. Even in a largely forgettable revenge tale, she manages to imbue a somewhat shoddy character with an emotional depth that demands your attention. Her work as Uhura in Star Trek is just as impressive; while that character is little more than a romantic foil for Zachary Quinto's Spock, she's so charming and fun that she basically tricks you into thinking the character is more interesting than the material on the page. Theoretically she'll be appearing in James Gunn's Guardians Of The Galaxy as the film's lead female Gamora and I hear its a pretty kickass role, although I expect she'll be in heavy makeup a la her work in Avatar. One of these days someone's gonna give her a worthwhile character in a prestige film and she's gonna blow the doors off the theater.
I landed at Logan around noon on Monday, made my way home and collapsed on the couch for the remainder of the afternoon.
All in all, it was an action-packed weekend.
--------------------------------------- Title: Cobra Director: George P. Cosmatos Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen, Reni Santoni, Brian Thompson, Andrew Robinson, Lee Garlington Year Of Release: 1986 Viewing Method: iPad
--------------------------------------- Title: The Expendables 2 Director: Simon West Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Liam Hemsworth, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger Year Of Release: 2012 Viewing Method: iPad
--------------------------------------- Title: Iron Eagle Director: Sidney J. Furie Starring: Louis Gossett Jr., Jason Gedrick, David Suchet, Larry B. Scott, Jerry Levine, Michael Bowen, Melora Hardin, Tim Thomerson Year Of Release: 1986 Viewing Method: iPad
--------------------------------------- Title: Colombiana Director: Oliver Megaton Starring: Zoe Saldana, Jordi Molla, Lennie James, Michael Vartan, Cliff Curtis, Callum Blue Year Of Release: 2011 Viewing Method: iPad
