It was awesome, of course. In fact, it was a lot more of what the original film was marketed to be. The promotional material for the first one suggested that 80s action icons, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger would all be costarring in a film together. Instead, Stallone was the main character, and the other two shared a single scene, explosionless scene with him. While they are still peripheral characters in this one, they do have more active roles. The majority of the vestigial concept that best fills the role of the "plot" or "story" in other movies, focuses on Stallone and most of his merry band of mercs, but there are cameos from several big name, not-making-real-action-movies-anymore actors. I'm also pretty sure that the Hollywood chapter of the Republican Party could have had a official meetings on set, as what appears to be a quorum, if not a majority, of them are in the film.

Anyway, the movie starts out, like all good action movies, in media res, as they carry out a successful mission, to establish that they are good at their jobs (so there's no confusion on that score when the MAIN mission gets all sorts of screwed up). From there, they have downtime to establish their characters, but that doesn't work, so they are assigned to retrieve a McGuffin, and when they get it too quickly, it is obvious the bad guys will somehow obtain it and force the good guys to get it back. And there is a village being gratuitously oppressed by the bad guys for the good guys to liberate. All of this happens so there can be explosions and decapitations.

Things to like:

Explosions & Decapitations: Duh.

Tasteful handling of decapitations:This was surprising, though not on reflection, because the movie is not about the gore and violence, it is about the individuals for whom gore and violence are their stock in trade. So you see heads being blown off but you don't get closeups or lingering shots or slow motion focus on the heads. The good guy is shooting a gun, and the bad guys' heads explode and we keep moving, because there are more people to shoot.

The casting: They perfectly cast most of the actors, because they were all playing themselves. Sample dialogue:

Trench: I'm all out, I'll be...

Church: NO! You're always being back! This time I'll be back.

Trench: Yippie-ki-yay.

Do you need to be told who plays Trench and who plays Church? Surprisingly, their character names and Barney, are the only ones I can remember. Beyond that I can only thing of them as the ugly one, the black one, the young one, the blond one and Jasonstatham. (Jetli bails out before the main plot. He probably had to go make some lame ass movie in China with symbolism and stuff.)

Also, it goes without saying, Jason Statham is in this one, playing his signature character, Jasonstatham (oh, like you can remember their real names? I saw every Transporter film on opening weekend, and I can't remember the character's actual name). As far as I am concerned, his movies should be a genre all their own, because you know exactly what you're getting and you're getting the same thing and it's going to be awesome. It's a Jason Statham Movie. There is a sub-genre, which seem to be slightly better from an artistic standpoint or whatever, which I call Jason Statham Period Dramas (The Killer Elite; The Bank Job), which tend to have actual actors and are supposedly based on true events, but they happened in England after World War Two, which is officially the last time anyone outside England gave a damn what happens there because America is the new British Empire, so for all we know, Jason Statham Period Dramas might as well be part of the historical record.

Anyway, Stallone, who co-wrote the screenplay, wisely give a lot of the real action and fighting to Statham, the number two character. I was very impressed with that in the first film, as I feared that it might turn into some sort of ego-vehicle, but it appears that deep down inside, Sly nurses some delusions of artistic merit so he hogs the emotional stuff for his own character, and lets Statham do what he's good at and Stallone is too old for. And then someone cleverly gets rid of the emotional stuff. Stallone's Barney claws back more of the action in this one, including a climatic hand-to-hand fight against Jean-Claude Van Damme's villain, and the emotional stuff,which no one wanted to see anyway, is scaled back. The first film had some sort of Wild-Bunch-esque maundering in the middle about fighters whose best days are behind them, but in this one, the emotional story is reduced to Barney not wanting to take a woman on the mission, because he gets too protective and feels bad when friends get killed. But she's Oriental, which means she has the built-in martial arts feature, so it's okay. A lot of that junk came from Mickey Rourke's character who was apparently kindly invited to find somewhere else to whine for this film, thank you very much.

The plot: Plot is for stupid movies that don't have cool stuff so they have to keep you entertained with cheap shallow tricks like telling you a story. I heard somewhere that rule #1 for writers is "Show, don't tell." The Expendables franchise is dedicated to SHOWING you badass action, so they don't need to cover up any inadequacies in that department by TELLING you some bullshit story.

Charisma Carpenter: The only woman to appear in both films, and thus the female lead of the franchise, Carpenter is perfectly cast. Charisma Carpenter is to acting what the Expendables are to movies. The appeal is entirely visual and based on atavistic tastes and attractions. Content, performance, skill, subtlety and other components of what motion picture snobs would call "artistic merit" are entirely absent. Also, she's getting a little old to play hot chick girlfriend roles, so she fits right in with everyone else on the screen.

The Self-Awareness: All right, there are a lot of cheesy references such as one character threatening to "terminate" Schwarzenegger's character, but there are also a lot of things that seem almost WTF and over the top, but which can be seen with some mild effort, as allegorical or representative of the action movie industry today. Notably Stallone's eulogy for one character, which could be used as a metaphor for the actors playing the eulogizing and eulogized characters and their careers and the whole Hollywood forumlaic-go-with-what-has-already-worked-instead-of-gambling-on-something-new approach. The actors are like their mercenary characters in that there is a job that needs to be done, but no one wants to do it, so these old guys keep plugging along because who else is going to take up the slack.

Someone needs to give the public badass action movies with larger than life heroes, but that genre is just about dead, and no worthy successors are coming up to take their places. As it is, the two most reliable action heroes these days are Liam Neeson, in his sixties, and Jason Statham. These are the guys who can get away with playing Jasonstatham and Liamneeson in every movie, kind of like the guys who used to play Johnwayne and Clinteastwood (name a guy he's played since The Dead Pool - hell, before those films, he was the one who got famous for having no character name at all). However, neither character is really a larger than life sort, and they more get their thing done by being fast and clever and stubborn, not by being awesome and larger than life and swaggering.

It's kind of telling the two jokes in the whole movie that seem natural, and not forced, and to which the actors react naturally, is a comment in the beginning when someone asks Jetli "Did you win" and he gives a scornful look before replying "Of course," and one of the last scenes, where Barney, Church and Trench are looking at an old biplane and Stallone's character sneers (or maybe just says - his mouth is kind of stuck that way) "That thing belongs in a museum!" To which Schwarzenegger's character replies "So do we." The three of them share a chuckle which comes across as being as natural as two of their hideously re-sculpted visages can actually be.

Jasonstatham uses a thurible as a weapon: This one might be a little esoteric for some of you, but trust me, anyone whose every been an altar boy, especially one who has held the thurifer post during a High Mass or Benediction or procession, greatly understands the primal urges that receive vicarious relief upon viewing of that scene. The job usually only went to the most mature and trustworthy altar boys (some of you may have already intuited that I was not selected as a thurifer until the state of New Jersey deemed me old enough to operate a motor vehicle, and probably for the same reasons - stinky metallic object with combustion processes inside, that can KILL people if used irresponsibly at high speeds; it's no surprise that they gave this scene to the man who made his bones as The Transporter).

Things not to like:

Well, they force some lame jokes a whole bunch, and Chuck Norris' appearance in the film is very surreal. But given the self-awareness hinted at above, I'm going to call it a stylistic choice, so that stuff is good too. Any complaints about this movie are going to be like complaining about the logo, of a metallic skull with dozens of knife blades, rifle barrels and pistol muzzles fanning out behind it. Yes, that is way more weapons than anyone needs, but if you can express such a sentiment, you are totally missing the point.

Expendables 2 gets 9.5 out of a possible four stars. Because Expendables 2 cares no more for common grading systems than it does the usual rules of making movies.