Eye Candy #601 - "The Expendables 2"

The Expendables 2:  Now with Even More Senior Citizens!  This sequel is a step backward from the 2010 action fan orgy, with most of the returning gang back in action: Sly, Statham, Lundgren, Crews, and Couture all back to make large red holes in people (Jet Li reprises his role for the opening sequence and then vanishes from the picture; Liam Hemingsworh is here as the team’s sniper).  This time around, the gang is hired by Church (Bruce Willis) to recover a hard drive from a downed aircraft in Albania, with a new Asian team member, CIA agent Maggie Chan (Yu Nan).  Once on the ground, they run afoul of the villainous Jean Vilain (played by Jean-Claude Van Damme) and his small army of squibbed-out soldiers who are also seeking the hard drive as it contains the map to a cache of Soviet-era plutonium.  Our boys then set about getting themselves some revenge (all while helping the locally oppressed population, a plot device now seen in both Expendables films).  In addition to the beefed-up presence of Willis, we also get more Schwarzenegger as Trench (and his face just looks WEIRD; I got distracted trying to determine who in the cast had face-lifts) and the addition of Chuck Norris as the damn near omnipotent Booker.  Aside from the whiz-bang opening sequence, this film is dull dull dull.  There are so many asides to other action films and knowing winks going on here, it’s a wonder the faces of the cast don’t freeze that way.   And the suspension of disbelief just gets worn the hell out somewhere around the part where Chuck Norris kills over a dozen men…and a tank…single-handedly…in 15 seconds.  Stallone looks like hell and mumbles through most of his “profound” dialogue (Lundgren continues his struggles being coherent in the English language). Van Damme is fun as the villain, even if most of his dialogue is crap.  Charisma Carpenter reprises her role for about 90 seconds.  After the first 10 minutes, this film was all kinds of disappointing.  Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”

Eye Candy #600 - "Dredd" (2012)

Dredd:  There are a few rules in all of comicbookdom – wearing glasses is always a foolproof disguise for Superman, Peter Parker’s Aunt May will never die, and you don’t show Judge Dredd’s face.  This is the second attempt to bring the story of Judge Dredd to the silver screen (the last being 1994’s god-awful “Judge Dredd” starring Sylvester Stallone, the less said about, the better).  100 years in the future, the bulk of humanity now lives in giant “mega cities” surrounded by irradiated wastelands.  Mega City One is located on the east coast of the US and houses some 800 million people in a vast urban sprawl.  Law enforcement is handled by judges, individuals empowered to pass summary judgement and enforce punishment, up to and including on-the-spot executions.  The most brutal and effective judge is Judge Dredd (Karl Urban).  His tagline – “I am the law.”  He is tasked with evaluating a new Judge, Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), a mutant with psychic abilities, on her first day.  They take a call to investigate three murders that took place in a vast 200 story housing skyscraper called Peacetrees.  Peachtress is run by the Ma-Ma Clan, a gang of violent drug dealers lead by the psychotic Ma-Ma (Lena Headey, looking as unattractive as she possibly can).  When Dredd and Anderson capture a valuable member of the Ma-Ma Clan, Kay (Wood Harris, “The Wire’s” Avon Barksdale), it brings down Ma-Ma’s wrath as she works to protect her drug operation manufacturing Slo-Mo (a drug that makes your brain think time is passing at 1% its regular rate).  What ensues feels very much like recent “The Raid – Redemption” – floor by floor fighting to get the perps and get out alive (though without the chop-socky silliness).  Extreme violence ensues.  And what I mean by that is, have you ever wanted to see what it would be like if someone fell 200 stories and landed on their face?  Well, in “Dredd” you get to…from the perspective of the floor.  People get shot in the face, shot in the head, set on fire, turned into red mist, scads of civilians caught in the crossfire, as Dredd stops at nothing to get his man…er, woman.  You’ve seen this plot before, it’s nothing new, but the execution is well produced and well-paced and it doesn’t overstay its welcome.  And it finally gives the regularly scowly Urban a movie he can scowl all the time in (and no, we don’t get to see Judge Dredd’s face).  Woodchuck sez, “Me likey.”