Trailer: The Last Stand

Arnie's new film. He wasn't lying when he said he'd be back.

Expendables 2 Trailer

Looking impossibly more ridiculous than the first. Should be great!

Get A Room You Two!

Oh, you did.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone about to have shoulder surgery.

I don't even want to know what they've been doing...

Expendables 2 Movie Poster

Fuckin' A! Why Jet Li looks like a Chinese woman however is beyond me...

;)

Film Review: Conan the Barbarian

This remake business is getting a bit out of hand isn't it? Does no one have an original bone in their body anymore? Are movie-goers doomed to an eternity of iteration upon iteration? One would certainly hope not. But epitomising this trend of late is German-born director Marcus Nispel, someone who has built a career on remaking other people's movies (Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Masacre, Frankenstein). Unsurprisingly then his latest work is also another re-imagining, that of John Milius' Conan the Barbarian.

In the Hyborian Age of beards and broadswords, evil Khalar Zym (Lang) murders the chief (Perlman) of a barbarian tribe whilst in search for the last piece of a magic mask. Years later the son of the chief, Conan (Momoa), is determined to avenge his father's death by killing practically everyone else. Along the way he gets involved with Tamara (Nichols), the last of an ancient bloodline whom Zym needs to complete a ritual that will activate the mask and enable him to rule the world. Or some such tripe...

Of course, you don't go into a remake expecting something groundbreaking and this new Conan is no exception. Blood and boobs, both are here. What you do expect from remakes however is how they will inevitably shit all over the memory of the original you enjoyed all those years ago. Again, Conan is no exception. In which case it might be unfair to chide those responsible for this work of unrelenting barbarism. However, even with such low expectations this incarnation is pretty bad, omitting everything which gained the original its pulp classic status, most glaringly the Austrian behemoth himself. Indeed, Arnie's are big boots to fill. So big in fact that even the hulking figure of Jason Momoa, whom many will recognise from Stargate Atlantis and Game of Thrones, looks like a scrawny little child compared to the Teutonic slab.

To be fair, Conan the Barbarian has a reasonably captivating if unambitious opening involving a narrator spinning some yarn of dungeons and dragons while a camera pans across a dingy, windswept landscape. Shot in Bulgaria, the country certainly has a knack for strangely alluringly drab environments, cinematographer Thomas Kloss truly capturing some fascinating locations and stunning imagery. We are introduced to Conan, plucked from his mother on the field of battle, and follow him through his teenage years to manhood in the form of Momoa's rippling form. However it is this stage of adulthood where everything starts to go wrong, the film descending into a farcical circus of hacking and maiming. Conan, as you might expect, is dedicated to unfettered carnage. In 3D.

The plot becomes largely inconsequential, merely existing to shift characters along from point A to B. There's something about a magic mask and the need of 'pure blood' from an extinct lineage of sorceresses to activate it, but the film doesn't waste any more time explaining this than it took you to read that sentence. There's less acting than there is grunting as blank avatars flex and pose to ludicrous effect. Dialogue isn't welcome in this men of men's world, typified by a scene in which Rachel Nichol's character threatens to get chatty, only for Momoa to silence her by stuffing a rag in her mouth.

Indeed, Nichols proves to be a forgettable love interest, literally yelping and screaming so much to be heard that you begin to wish someone put her out of her misery. Momoa is a drab slate without hint of personality or charisma while Lang is just about passable as your generic villain. Perhaps the only person seemingly involved is Zym's daughter Marique (McGowan), a seductive sorceress who's the only character that infers any real menace. Action set pieces, while impressive the first time round, wear thin by the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth time you see them to the point where all this sadism and barbarity is justified on the basis that, well, Conan is a barbarian. Indeed, our hero is so blank that he is almost indistinguishable from the bad guys. He fights under no moral code, nor does he stand for any kind of principle.

Conan the Barbarian exists to hack and maim as much folly as possible, purely for the sake of showcasing as much sadistic carnage as it possibly can. It's pure primitive savagery and as if to hammer this home Conan neatly surmises this film's philosophy on life, stating "I live, I love, I slay, I am content". It's the simple things after all, isn't it? In which case you might enjoy this simple film. Moreover though this lacks any sense of fun that in theory it should have in spades. It's all rather drudging.

Schwarzenegger Filming For 'The Expendables 2'

I love Arnie =)

Lego Terminator

"Discuss the merits of hyperalloy endoskeletons all you want, but I'll take a Lego Terminator any day. After all, it's probably invincible, being powered by the imaginations of children and all."

Film Review: The Expendables

A rogue CIA agent turned drug lord (Roberts) has funded a coup on a small island in the Gulf of Mexico through his puppet, General Garza (Zayas). Letting his emotions get the better of him upon seeing the state of the island, Barney Ross (Stallone) and his gang of washed-up ageing mercenaries return to wreak destruction on the bad guys. The plot is, quite frankly, a bloody load of shit. But let's be honest, you didn't come to see that, did you? To be perfectly clear here, by critical standards this is a terrible film. Deep, winding character arcs, Oscar-worthy performances and clever writing there is not. Neither is this a parody of those 80s action films like Commando and Rambo we grew up with. Rather, The Expendables is a film that could easily have come from the decade itself. It is a raucous ride fuelled with testosterone, coated in nostalgia with a sprinkling of dynamite.

All the characters in this film are incredibly generic, one-dimensional beings. There's the short guy, subject to the same joke throughout the film (Jet Li), the guy with the cauliflower ear (Couture), the obligatory huge black dude with a love of heavy weaponry (Crews), the wise old sage (Rourke), whose role is surprisingly rather small in this, and the inevitable member of the team you can never trust (Lundgren). One can only reason that if you're going to cast every action star on the planet in the same film then there really isn't going to be much room to manoeuvre around all the huge egos. For this film to be truly complete it would only have needed the presences of Jean Claude Van Damme, Couture's role evidently penned for him, and that weirdo Steven Seagal, both whom turned down Stallone's best efforts to sign them. Roberts is perfectly cast as the 'sophisticated' slime-ball bad guy accompanied by his massive bodyguard in the form of cueball 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin. David Zayas' tinpot dictator, General Garza - whom you may recognise from the TV series Dexter - is just one big fat cliché. Indeed, everyone else takes a back seat to Stallone and Statham who actually make for a pretty entertaining duo on screen. There was definitely a little spark between the two, notably where in one scene Statham's Lee Christmas introduces himself as 'Buda' and Stallone as 'Pest'. Honestly, it's funnier than it sounds.

Of course, the talking point on everyone's lips was the inclusion of the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mr 'Die Hard' Bruce Willis. If Stallone had left it a secret for audiences to see in the theatre then you may have been forgiven for thinking this wasn't merely a bad publicity stunt. Cheekily however Stallone marketed the entire film on this 'gimmick', displaying it for the cheesy nostalgia fest it really is from the word 'go'. The scene itself adds absolutely nothing to the plot (or lack of) and one might easily be mistaken for thinking it no different to one of their Planet Hollywood gatherings. It really is full strength cheddar, but if you grew up with these bad-asses it is also jaw-droppingly cool. Even though the acting is so contrived and wooden it is nonetheless highly amusing to watch these ridiculously jacked geriatrics taking pot-shots at one-another, particularly one of Stallone's jibes at the Austrian behemoth.

As far as action sequences go The Expendables is absolutely insane where everything in this film defies logic. From Stallone running about 20 feet behind a plane and then making some immense jump to 'just' latch on, to the subsequent aircraft strafing the island's pier, to a moment involving Stallone, Crews, an artillery shell and a helicopter. It really is just preposterous. As well as explosions and big guns, the hand-to-hand combat is brutally awesome as you flinch with each bone-crunching twist. I literally pissed myself laughing at a part where Crews, wielding a huge shotgun, rampages down a tunnel blasting away generic soldiers. I'm fully expecting an amusing .gif of this to be present on the internet very soon.

Stallone is not the brainless muscle-bound idiot some people would believe. His career has actually seen some very poignant works and great pieces of writing. The Expendables however does not rank up among them. Is this a good film? Probably not. Entertaining? Hell yeah!